A regional office of Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship would come up in Uttarakhand which would be the first regional office outside Delhi. This was disclosed by the secretary Union Government Dr KP Krishnan while participating in a joint meeting held in the secretariat on Wednesday chaired by the Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat where the representatives of the Centre, State Government and Tata Trust participated. CM said that the State Government would provide land to the Centre to house the office, adding that the office coming up would ensure that the ongoing and the upcoming projects are implemented smoothly in the State. The meeting was attended among others by the Tata Trust representative S Ramdurai and the chief secretary S Ramaswami. The meeting discussed matters related to enhancement of the youth skill with focus on improving the economic condition of the youth.
CM instructed the officials concerned to constitute a joint working committee comprising Tata Trust and the state government officials with the Chief secretary as its head. The committee would be tasked to prepare a roadmap for skill development, employment generation, bio-economy, e-governance and tourism. “Efforts should be made to draft a skill development plan at the district and the state levels,” CM said. He further informed that to impart the required training to the youth, Tata Trust would open two residential training centres one each in Kumaon and Garhwal divisions. They would be run by the technical team of the Tata Trust, he added. CM further instructed the officials to rope in more and more people under the national apprentice promotion scheme. He suggested making the district magistrates the nodal officers and fixing their target as well. He informed that the Centre would bear fourth of the funds to be pumped in executing the apprenticeship project.
The meeting apprised that 146 Industrial Training Institutes (ITI) are functional in the state. It was further revealed that out of the 1352 sanctioned posts of instructors/foreman, only 581 trained and 261 untrained officials have been appointed so far. To increase the capacity of the untrained instructors, the Centre would conduct three or six months’ crash course for them, the meeting revealed. In these ITIs, more than 50 percent of the youths are interested in electrician or fitter course. It was mentioned that there is a tremendous scope in automobile and hospitality sectors.
Secretary Krishnan said that after studying the functioning of the ITIs, the Centre would spend Rs 100 crore to up-grade these institutes with focus on capacity building, laboratory, equipment, building and the like. He asked the state government to send proposal regarding the same to the Union government. Besides, he said that the available resources of IIT Roorkee and Pantnagar University would be enhanced. “TATA, ITC, India Glycol and some other big companies have shown interests in the ITIs located in Uttarakhand. The training expenses of up to 10000 youths might be borne by the Centre,” he added. He further said that the Centre would conduct foreign language course to enable the Yoga trained instructors to get employment abroad.
While making presentation on agriculture, tourism, e-governance and the like, Tata Trust representatives said that the State Government should prepare high value molecules with available sugarcane to push up the income of the sugarcane growers. They said that bio-economy would dominate the picture in the coming days. They also made presentation on how they can double the tourist footfall while improving the quality of school education and ensuring cyber security.
Additional chief secretary Ranvir Singh advised them to assess the market demands to enable the youth to get employment after completing their training schedule.
Additional chief secretary Omprakash stressed on imparting training in the health sector too. Principal secretary Anand Vardhan said that efforts should be made to ensure that the training programme certificates are acceptable globally so that the certificate holders can get immense employment scope after the training. later, CM also visited the stall raised by the Tata Group of Industries within the premises of the secretariat.