Make knowledge of Khasi & Garo a must for Postal recruitment: KSU

Syllad | The Rising MeghalayaJuly 21, 2023

The Khasi Students Union Employment Monitoring Cell has urged the Meghalaya Government to take up with Central Government for making knowledge of Khasi and Garo languages compulsory during the recruitment of GDS/ ABPM/ BPM for Post Offices under the State of Meghalaya.

In a letter to Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma, the KSU informed that the recruitment for Branch Post Master/ Assistant Branch Post Master & Gramin Dak Sevak post for Post Offices about the recruitments in Meghalaya Division has been released by the North East Postal Circle in May, 2023 and similar recruitments would be released in the upcoming months.

The letter lamented that it has been observed by the KSU that whenever such recruitments are being made, very few local indigenous people are recruited and the major drawback for this is because the language for selection is based on English and Hindi. Unlike the others states who has their own local language as a criterion for selection, they added.

The KSU Employment Monitoring Cell said, “Although after your intervention into the matter vide letter D.O.NO.CM/PER-UM/2023/33 address to Ashwini Vaishnaw, Union Minister for Communications, Khasi and Garo language was also added as one of the languages for selection but in the ongoing present recruitment, it has shown to rendered no effectiveness as 80-90 percent of the selected candidates are from other states and only a handful of the local indigenous people are being selected,”.

They asserted the reason behind it is that English and Hindi Language is still available as a language for selection and thus, people from other states can apply and the criterion for selection is only on merit, based only on Class X results, hence, making it very difficult for the local indigenous people to compete with the people from the plains areas.

The Union would like to reiterate its stand that for the post of BPM/ABPM/ GDS local language is utmost important as they will primarily have to communicate with the public and travel places and at times travel to remote and tough geographical terrain. Thus knowledge of the terrain is needful and a person from outside the state would not be able to serve that purpose respectfully, they added.

The letter informed other states and some North Eastern States also have their own language as a criterion for selection such as in Assam, language for selection is Assamese, Bengali and Bodo, in Mizoram is Mizo and in Manipur is English and Manipuri.

The KSU strongly advocated that language for selection should be based only on Khasi and Garo languages so as to allow the local indigenous population with better chance of employment.