Government has an ambitious plan to scale up skill training in the country and has decided to cover at least 1.5 crore people during 2016-2017. A Central Board for Skills Certification will be set up by September 2016 to infuse quality into India’s skill development ecosystem. These decisions were taken up in the first meeting of the Governing Council of the National Skill Development Mission (NSDM) chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on June 2 in New Delhi.
Prime Minister stressed on the need for proper skill mapping and identification of the future requirements for skills, so that school-children and parents are well aware of the emerging trends in the job market. Further, he said a similar exercise should also be done to map the skilled manpower requirements at the global level, so that India can meet the global requirement of skilled workforce. PMJ Modi emphasized the importance of imbibing safety norms and soft skills as integral parts of skill development.
The other important steps announced at the meeting include holding an annual national skills competition, known as ‘India Skills’ to recognize the skills of India’s youth, , a national level Convocation will be held for candidates who successfully complete ITI courses, to recognize their success, organizing 500 Rozgar Utsavs across Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs), Central Training Institutes, PMKVY training centres, toolrooms etc., to make skill training aspirational in youth, setting up of 50 Overseas Employment Skill Training Centres this year, in migratory pockets of the country, and mandatory apprenticeships, upto 10% of total manpower in profit making PSUs.
The meeting was attended by Chief Ministers of Maharashtra, Arunachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir; union skills minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy, union HRD minister Smriti Zubin Irani, union MSME minister Kalraj Mishra, union Communication and Information Technology minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, Cyrus P. Mistry, Chairman, Tata Group; Sachin Bansal, Founder and CEO Flipkart’ and Manish Sabharwal, Chairman and Founder, Team Lease Services among others . It may be noted that Prime Minister had launched the mission on 15 July 2015.
