Mumbai: Despite being planned in 2007, 250 Indian Training Institutes (ITI) in the State are lacking in infrastructure due to poor utilisation of funds, the CAG report said. It said only ₹167.27 crore have been spent over the last five to nine years of the ₹625 crore received for upgrading ITIs.
The report said 12 ITIs sanctioned between 2009 and 2012 did not incur any expenditure till June 2016, as some of them were operating out of rented buildings, and suffered from lack of space, non-affiliation to national institutes and reluctance on the part of the Institute Management Committee (IMC) to implement the Institute Development Plan (IDP). It said that 56 ITIs sanctioned between 2007 and 2012 incurred expenditure of less than ₹10 lakh up to June 2016 for upgradation.
ITIs mainly work to provide skilled labour to industry, and their upgrade was planned in October 2007 to improve employment prospects of graduates from the vocational training system. The CAG report says no criteria was specified for identifying ITIs for upgrades, while the criteria for selection of Industry Partner (IP) was not followed. “None of the 250 ITIs applied for accreditation from National Accreditation Board (NAB) for Education and Training, leading to non-affiliation of new trades proposed in IDPs of these institutes,” said the report.
The National Implementation Cell of the Government of India submitted a report in May 2013 pointing out that the upgradation suffered due to principals holding charge of more than one ITI, frequent transfer of principals and lack of instructors. “For effective running of 250 ITIs under the upgradation programme, the State government worked out a requirement of 2,299 instructors, against which only 20 posts were filled. The shortfall was made up through contractual appointments,” the report said.
