Chandigarh, Dec. 7: They strode in confidently for the interview and slapped down their CVs on the clerk’s desk. Their qualifications, they knew, would outgun everyone else’s.

Each of the three applicants had either an MPhil or an MA. It was enough to cause a sensation at the health department office in Sonepat, a Haryana town bordering Delhi.

For, the job on offer was that of a “temporary messenger”, a more polite way of saying “peon”.

Apart from transferring files from one official to another, a messenger’s job includes making tea, fetching snacks from outside for the babus and running other errands for them. The pay: Rs 4,000 a month.

“We were astonished when we read their qualifications. This is a job that does not need a higher qualification than Class V pass. To have MPhils appearing for an interview for the post of a temporary messenger for three months stunned all of us,” one of the interviewers said.

“We will be sending the files to the government to take a final decision on whom to appoint from the 76 candidates. We have only three vacancies.”

Spiralling unemployment has sent thousands of educated youths applying for grade IV jobs in Haryana.

Last year, the state government was stunned when 14,000 people, including engineering graduates, postgraduates and diploma-holders, applied for temporary posts of ward boy at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Rohtak.

The posts were to be filled initially for a period of six months at a salary of about Rs 3,500 a month. The duties of a ward boy, also called a “bearer”, include shifting patients for tests to the various wards and clinics.

The 14,000 who applied included 10,000 arts graduates and several hundred engineering graduates. Nearly 100 held master’s in more than one subject. The minimum qualification for a ward boy’s job, too, is Class V pass.

Officials say there may be over 20 lakh educated jobless in the state, half of them being “highly educated”. Few register with the employment exchange, as most companies use placement agencies to recruit. There is almost no recruitment in the public sector.

Yet, the state’s economy has recorded an average annual growth of over six per cent over the past four years and exports have crossed Rs 10,000 crore. It’s the negative growth in the agriculture sector and low growth in the manufacturing sector that has hit the job scene hard, officials say.