New Delhi, Sep 5 (IANS): The Congress on Saturday slammed the Central government over its latest circular on stopping creation of jobs in the government. The party said "it is a very alarming situation as the country's economy is already in doldrums".

Addressing a virtual press conference, senior Congress leader Rajeev Shukla said: "The Centre came out with the circular yesterday, in which the creation of new jobs within the government has been completely stopped."

He said that the circular issued by the Finance Ministry suggests that new jobs "cannot" be created at all, the vacancies which are already existing should not be filled.

"This is a very alarming situation, since country's economy is already in doldrums. Our GDP has gone down - 23.9 per cent. International Labour Organisation (ILO) report suggests that 40 crore people are going to be below poverty line," he said.

Shukla wondered "if the government stops helping people and stops creating jobs, and if it does not come forward, or step up to support the young people in this critical time, then who is going to support them".

He said that the private sector is already into retrenchment because their financial situation is very bad and the government is not helping them as well in terms of loan waivers etc. The Supreme Court is already hearing the matter.

"So, we are further emphasizing on this issue that government should re-consider this circular and apart from that the second part of the circular is suggesting that the government expenditure in certain areas should be curbed," he said.

"But, there are very trivial, very frivolous items which have been shown into, like the use of papers, the celebrations of foundation day... How much are you going to save on it?" he asked.

"The Congress demands creation of more vacancies, and more posts in the government... all the vacancies which are already existing should be filled immediately and people should be provided employment," Shukla said.