Bandaru Dattatreya, the new Minister of State for Labour and Employment, has said that the Government of India is planning to expand capacity of 12,000 industrial training institutes.
He said this while launching the 3rd India-Australia Skills Conference along with Ian Macfarlane, Australian Minister for Industry. The Conference is an initiative of the Australia India Education Council in partnership with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC).
This was the Indian Minister's first official international engagement. He applauded the effort of the Australian Minister, for personally coming to Mumbai and giving this initiative the impetus it deserves.
He highlighted his ministry's initiatives on Skills and reiterated that Skill development is in the centre stage as per the vision of India's Prime Minister and the current government.
He stated that with India going to add 10 million people to the work force each year, for next 15 years who would need to be skilled and employed. In addition to this, skilling of the existing work force of 470 million of which only 10% have received formal or informal training, is an enormous task going forward. He mentioned that training conducted by companies has emerged to produce competitive workforce required by the industry and also acknowledged their role in apprentice training.
He informed that the ministry has launched a scheme for Flexi MoUs between industry and industrial training institutes which would lead to a minimum of 80% of placement in the industry.
Macfarlane stated that the fact that this is the 3rd edition of the India-Australia Skills Conference, is the testament of the commitment that both the countries have in collaborating in skills.
He pointed out that by 2020, 25% of the total international manpower employed will be Indian and hence it is the most opportune time to bring vocational training in India to an International standard for higher mobility. He further announced new enhanced trainer and assessor courses recognizing high quality training and trainer need known as Future Unlimited Training and Assessment Courses pioneered in India. The courses will be launched in three formats.
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