Thiruvananthapuram: Amid a jobs crunch in the state and thousands of Kerala expats having had to return home owing to COVID-19-related job losses, youth in Kerala are grabbing at every new job opportunity — the latest being farm jobs on two South Korean islands.
Roughly 500 youth lined up on Wednesday at the state capital to attend a seminar organised by the Overseas Development and Employment Promotion Council (ODEPC), a state government undertaking which recruits for overseas jobs. Similar seminars are also scheduled in Kochi.
The farm jobs are located on islands in South Korea’s Sinan and Muan counties, where temperatures are sub-zero for five months of the year, and the jobs include working on onion and cabbage fields, but the youth who crowded the seminar appeared not to mind.
Many of them admitted frankly that the key attraction was the monthly package of $1,500 (roughly Rs112,500).
“This is a first-of-a-kind recruitment drive of this nature”, ODEPC managing director K.A. Anoop told Gulf News. The South Korean government-owned farms are looking for about 1,000 farm hands, and ODEPC plans to test the market by initially recruiting 100 candidates.
Given Kerala’s high literacy and the propensity of youth to complete graduation and post-graduation, there were many among the prospective candidates who were highly qualified. “Among those who applied were a B.Ed degree holder and even an M.Com second rank holder. My request is that such highly qualified candidates should yield place to those who are less qualified for these farm jobs,” Anoop said while addressing the prospective candidates.
“It is the salary of over Rs100,000 per month that is the attraction”, S.L. Vishnu from Varkala who attended Wednesday’s preliminary seminar told Gulf News.
The job includes working on onion and other vegetable farms as well as in sorting and packing vegetables. Women will have preference, while those below 25 years and above 40 years may find it difficult to get work visas in South Korea.
Many candidates, though, may find one aspect of the job profile a little hard to digest. The work time is from 8am to 5pm, and there are only two days off in a month – a work culture almost unknown in Kerala. But in post-COVID-19 days when jobs are still scarce in Kerala, the youth who thronged the job seminar appeared ready for any job role.
