Gangtok, March 10: The Sikkim Promotion of Local Employment Bill, which seeks to reserve 95 per cent of jobs for the Sikkimese in all private sector businesses operating in the state, was passed in the Assembly today.

The bill was also endorsed by the lone Opposition MLA, Acharya Tshering Lama, in the 32-member House.

“Educated youths are looking only at government jobs, creating an unemployment problem. But I think they will now get jobs in the private sector as well,” Lama said.

Chief minister Pawan Chamling, whose party, the Sikkim Democratic Front, has 31 legislators in the House, had introduced the bill on Friday. “Our objective is to protect the Sikkimese,” said Chamling, who holds the department of personnel portfolio, during the discussion on the bill.

Highlighting the deficit of skilled manpower in the state, Chamling said the objectives of the bill would be defeated if human resource was not prepared. “We must prepare skilled manpower to enable them to tap the opportunities,” he added.

The bill’s beneficiaries are those possessing Certificate of Identification or the Sikkim Subject Certificate. Sikkimese who have been living in the state from the time of the Chogyals are generally holders of the certificate.

Employment of non-Sikkimese will be considered in cases where locals are not technically qualified.

The bill has been welcomed by a wide section of the population in the state. The All Sikkim Youth Association, while welcoming the bill as well as the recent waiver on income tax, called for a fresh scrutiny of domicile certificate holders.

The organisation alleged that there were a large number of fake subject certificate holders. The administration should conduct fresh verification exercise, it said.

The Sikkim Chamber of Commerce said the bill was “good” in the sense that it was designed to check influx of bulk migrant workforce, which was being brought for projects in the state, and also provide jobs to the unemployed locals.

The chamber stressed that the local manpower needed to be skilled. “The issue was discussed several times with the government in the past few months. We had also asked for some relaxation for small establishments, which employ less than 10 people. Many of these employees had been working with us for long and they were our responsibilities,” a chamber official said.