Punjab Government on Thursday announced to increase 7,800 seats in its technical education institutes from the current year. Besides, the Department of Technical Education and Industrial Training will introduce more industry relevant courses and has set a target to train about 2.5 lakh persons this year. The state Technical Education and Industrial Training Minister Madan Mohan Mittal said that these steps have been formulated to ensure employability of youths by providing them skill training as per industrial sector demands.
He informed that the department has undergone a big rationalisation drive and discontinued irrelevant trades based on inputs from various stakeholders like principals, industry partners.The minister said that steps have been initiated to provide the required infrastructure and manpower.In this regard, 268 teaching and 34 non-teaching faculties have been newly recruited for the ITIs.He divulged that the department has also taken various steps for placement of trainees. Around 300 campus interviews and 51 job fairs were organised during the last year wherein more than 9800 trainees were placed in reputed industries, he said.
Coming to the important aspect of skill development, the Minister said that State Skill Development Mission has been set up to effectively implement of various skill development initiatives in the State.Regarding skill development, Mittal said that Multi-Skill Development Centres (MSDCs) are planned at each district. The main centre at the district level ITI will serve as a hub and smaller centres at other ITIs in the district will serve as spokes.In the first phase, MSDCs will be set up at Jalandhar, ludhiana, Amritsar, Bathinda and Hoshiarpur. The industry-specific demand driven courses shall be started at these centres.Besides, five new ITI's will also be set up at Adampur (Jalandhar), Maloud (ludhiana), Niari (Gurdaspur), Singhpura (Roop Nagar) and Manakpur Sharif (Mohali).