Working closely with the Center in the direction of making large number of youths skilled the State Government is all set to raise the beneficiaries and incorporate more people into Skill India Mission. The idea is to take attach 50,000 unskilled youths from the upcoming financial year with the centrally sponsored scheme being run through National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC).
Principal Secretary in the Department of labour, Employment and Training MS Bhatia informing about the plan of the State Government in this regard said that empanelment of trainers would be done for the purpose.
“We are currently running the skill development programme on pilot basis in the State for 4000 unskilled youths. But for the next year, we have chalked out a plan to raise the number of youths as much as 50,000. Presently we have 22 affiliated training service providers with NSDC who run training programme of three months duration,” said the official.
The Skill India Mission is a pet scheme of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the State Government feels that it can turn up one of the most beneficial plans for Jharkhand. The State faces acute problem of labour migration to other parts of the country in search of employment and the rate leaps especially during non-farm seasons or in case of drought.
“Under the Skill India scheme, standards of training and the trainers have been fixed and certified with the NSDC. Thus the trainers have to be certified. We are also working for empanelling more number of NGOs or agencies for providing skill development training to the youths,” added Bhatia.
Notably, the scheme is directly employment linked and the trainers providing skill development training are also responsible for placing the youths or making them self-employed in nature in order to drive them out of joblessness. Bhatia at the same time also underlined role of financing agencies like banks and other credit providing firms those would supplement the trained youths in standing them on their own feet.
Although, he did not comment on a recent controversy raised in allowing State based NGOs for empanelment as recognised trainers. It is leant that the Department was under pressure to keep open the platform for the trainers not necessarily affiliated with the NSDC along with the empanelled ones. The process for selection of the trainers is still on.