Textile mills, foundries, and the engineering units in Coimbatore, employing lakhs of workers, continue to face high attrition rates and shortage of skilled workers.
Though there are skill development schemes by the Central and State governments, these programmes need to be modified to meet the industry needs, say sources.
The Coimbatore Industrial Infrastructure Association (COINDIA) is conducting skill training for almost a decade now. It takes up projects under CSR activities of banks and State government schemes. However, the challenge is in identifying candidates, says its former president S. Kuppusamy. The attraction towards manufacturing sector is on the decline, he says.
“We train based on industry requirement. There are programmes for CNC turning, milling, winding, solar technicians, etc. And 99 % of the candidates are absorbed by the industry. The Government has approved the syllabus.
Even now, under the Tamil Nadu Skill Development Project we are training 480 candidates. We have completed the sessions for 115 and all the rest will be trained by the end of this year,” he says. The candidates get a certificate at the end of the course after they take a test.
Explaining the challenge of getting fresh candidates to be trained for engineering or foundry work, he says majority of the workforce in the foundries are migrant workers. There is no guarantee on how long they will stay at a unit. The attrition rate is 25 % in foundries. Hence, majority of the units are going in for mechanisation.
President of Coimbatore District Small Industries Association, R. Ramamurthy, says the Association plans to submit a detailed project report for a skill development centre here. The courses should be for three to six months. Only longer duration courses will help. In the case of small and medium-scale enterprises, the attrition rate is 10 % and shortage of skilled workers is 25 %.
“We do not get trainers to operate CNC machines. We recruit diploma holders. We need to skill workers on a large scale to meet the shortage and to improve quality and production. Most of them now learn by experience. Further, a challenge faced by SMEs is that they cannot employ apprentice. In big companies, 10 % of the total workers can be apprentices. In small companies it is not possible. Hence, the percentage permitted should be increased to 50.
Any training facility for workers for the engineering sector should be with accommodation facilities. The government should give subsidy for it so that more rural candidates can be trained to work in the industries here. There is a need to have a system for training and skilling, he says.
In the case of textile mills, K. Selvaraju, secretary general of Southern India Mills’ Association, says the Central Government scheme implemented through sector skill councils has been tightened now. The State governments will be giving skill training. However, what is needed for the textile mills is training for the workers in concepts such as lean manufacturing.
Prabhu Dhamodharan, convenor of Indian Texpreneurs Federation, explains that it trained 18,000 candidates in the last two-and-a-half years under the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana. It is a 45-day training. There are many other schemes too. Under the PMKVY, the sector skill councils develop the curriculum and implement the training in association with industrial bodies. Textile mills train the trainers in batches, there is a biometric attendance systems, and get the training charges reimbursed. ‘
Not all textile mills had training facilities and they were unable to send the workers to common facilities. Now, the procedure has been standardised and trainees gets hands on experience on the machinery.
However, the training does not have much of a positive impact on productivity for every mill. Neither does it attract more workers.
Even now, attrition is there. While earlier it was 10 % to 15 %, it has increased to 30 %.
There are workers from the north trained at mills here. They either go to State such as Maharashtra or Gujarat or shift to other mills here. About 60 % trained by the ITF are women and of the total candidates 95 % is given jobs.
It is a useful scheme as it creates a training system. But, it should be refined. It is only for basic training. It should be introduced for multi-skilling and should be taken to the next stage. The Government should introduce certificate courses and grade the trainees, he said.
