Skill, labour, talent for MSMEs: The total jobseeker count on the MSME Ministry’s job portal MSME Sampark has recorded an increase of around 7,000 new job hunters from 4.68 lakh as of January 20, 2021, to 4.75 lakh as of January 24, 2022, official data showed, indicating more people looking for jobs during the Covid period. However, for 4.75 lakh jobseekers, there were only 127 vacancies available, which had reduced by 84 per cent from 819 in January last year, even as the number of recruiters grew 5 per cent from 5,951 to 6,271, data from the portal at the time of filing this report showed. The job platform was launched by President Ram Nath Kovind in June 2018. 

MSME Sampark enables trainees and students passing out from the 18 MSME Technology Centres in India and recruiters including national and multinational firms to connect for hiring and manpower needs, akin to private job portals such as Naukri.com or others. According to the portal, the technology centres offer training to around 1.5 lakh students annually and most of them are absorbed by industry in the country as well as abroad.

“Through this portal, we are looking to hire freshers as operators for our (CNC) machines. We have installed more than 70 machines in the last two years and increased manpower by 300 people in past two-three years. We had started looking for hiring through different channels including MSME Sampark last year as during Covid it was difficult to find and hire people. We had also tied up with different industrial training institutes (ITIs) for direct hiring,” Mayank Kejriwal, Director, Kiswok Industries told Financial Express Online. 

Kiswok is a Kolkata-based automotive castings manufacturer. The company has listed 80 vacancies for the post of CNC machine operator on MSME Sampark. 

Comments from MSME Sampark for this story weren’t immediately available. 

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India had 52 million unemployed people in December 2021 including 35 million who were actively looking for work and 17 million who were passively unemployed, as per data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE). The total unemployed count jumped 34 per cent from 38.7 million in December 2020. 

“A more immediate challenge is in providing employment to the 7.9 per cent who are in the unemployment rate. These were 35 million in December 2021. They were not employed and they were actively looking for employment. An equally important challenge is to provide employment to the additional 17 million who were also not employed and were willing to work if work was available although they were not actively looking for work,” CMIE had said in its weekly report last week. 

Since its launch, 30,884 candidates were placed via the Sampark portal so far, only 10 per cent up from 28,029 candidates placed as of January 20, 2021. The total jobs posted and open job postings currently on the portal were 1,000 and 20 respectively. 

“Different government policies, which intend to create more jobs, are good but they are not being taken up to the maximum extent of utilisation. Formulation of policies is not the answer to the problem…Government must see that funding is happening to MSMEs on time so that they can tap into more business opportunities and create more jobs that could be listed on this portal as well,” Vijay Kalantri, President, All India Association of Industries (AIAI) and Chairman, MVIRDC World Trade Center, Mumbai had told Financial Express Online. AIAI represents around 40 industry associations with more than 30,000 MSME members.