HRD minister for centres for skill training on IIT lines

Union HRD Minister MM Pallam Raju today supported a proposal from industry for setting up of centres of excellence for skills on the lines of IITs and the Indian School of Law under the government's skilling initiatives.

He said he would "certainly carry them forward", after a suggestion in this regard was made by CEO and MD of Larsen and Toubro, K Venkataraman.

Participating at the sixth global skills summit, the L&T MD suggested that each of these centres could be devoted to skilling for different sectors such as construction, telecom, including soft skills.

The summit is being jointly organised by FICCI and the Ministry of Labour and Employment.

Venkataraman's suggestion came against the backdrop of the government's setting up of a National Skill Development Agency to align and coordinate the work of various ministries and departments on skilling initiatives.

The aim is to achieve the national goal of skilling 500 million Indians by the end of 2022, Raju said at the function as he called for increased participation by industry to carry forward the initiative.

The skilling sector, he said, offers ample investment opportunities. There is no slowdown in this sector, he said, adding that the national manufacturing policy envisaged creation of 100 million job opportunities by 2022.

Director General of Employment and Training under the Ministry of Labour and Employment, Shikhar Agarwal, however, flagged several issues on the occasion confronting the skills sector.

He said a large number of states still continue to get into the motion without doing substantial work on skilling initiatives amidst low presence of institutional vocational training infrastructure.

Low minimum wages for workers who are skilled, high attrition rates, shortage of quality assessors and too many certificates that are needed to be obtained were some of the other challenges which stakeholders have to address, he said.