Illustration used for representational purpose

The IT industry in Andhra Pradesh has raised concern over the government’s policy of reserving 75% jobs for “locals”.

“A lot of AP youngsters are working in Telangana , Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. If they also bring in a similar policy, then job prospects of AP people will disappear. The AP government does not seem to have factored this in when the 75% reservation policy was designed,” said a senior official of the Information Technology Association of Andhra Pradesh (ITAAP), requesting anonymity.

The ITAAP represents the IT sector in all the four IT clusters in the state—Visakhapatnam, Amaravati, Kakinada and Tirupati.

According to another ITAAP official, who also requested anonymity, the policy would be a dampener to potential investment in the IT sector. “The industry does lateral hiring, bringing in people with specific skill sets. We cannot promote locals just because they are locals. IT firms will be factoring this in when making their investment destinations,” he said.

The two ITAAP officials said the government should focus on skill development. “Over 1 lakh students graduate from 253 engineering colleges each year. Many of them are not employable because their theoretical skills are of little use to the IT sector. The government should focus on improving the students’ employability by launching skill development centres,” the first official said.

The IT sector in AP employs 25,000 people in the four IT clusters. IT exports totalled Rs 2,000 crore in the last financial year.

In comparison, the IT sector employed 5.43 lakh people and recorded exports of Rs 1.09 lakh crore in 2018-19, according to Hyderabad Software Enterprise Association (HYSEA).

“It is fine for chief minister YS Jaganmohan Reddy to say that locals should get preference in private sector jobs, and comparing the policy to the hire-local policies by the US government, but he needs to remember that the hire-local initiative started only recently.

“The US has had a laissez-faire policy since the end of World War II. The laissez-faire policy enabled people from all over the world to work in the US. This led to the US getting a cutting-edge in the IT sector. The IT sector in AP is at a growing stage. The 75% reservation policy will hobble the industry,” the official said.

The owner of a small IT services company in Visakhapatnam said the reservation policy made no sense to him, because he employed less than 50 people. “The government needs to clarify who is a ‘local’ and not bog down the industry with paperwork,” he said.

