The Additional Skill Acquisition Programme (ASAP) has to match industry demand for competencies with structure of skill courses for students, K.M. Abraham, former Chief Secretary and chairman, Kerala-Development Innovation Strategic Council (K-DISC), has said.
He was delivering the keynote address at Niyoga, a health care human resource conclave organised by ASAP here on Thursday.
Mr. Abraham said ASAP should rise to the next level by bridging the gap between what industry wants and how skills courses are designed.
Skill parks
ASAP had to become a community-linked programme. Once the 25 community-skill parks under ASAP came up, it should be able to reach out to the poorest of the poor and make skilling a core part of our work ethos, Mr. Abraham said.
Mr. Abraham said one of the things being explored by the K-DISC was if Kerala could become a medical technology hub of the country. A detailed project report for the hub was being drawn up. The hub would bring together people from the industry, academia, and those from the government so as to create an ecosystem to which entrepreneurs could be attracted to. Once the draft DPR was ready, the health care business advisory committee should take a look at it so that the possibilities in the sector could be explored to the maximum.
New job roles
Higher Education Principal Secretary Usha Titus, in her inaugural address, said students should be encouraged to fit job roles for the present and the future.
The health care sector’s internship system enabled people to deliver services as soon as they completed the course. It also relied heavily on technology, as a result of which a whole lot of job roles had evolved.
However, in the State only traditional job roles in the sector were looked forward to. There was need to skill people in newer job roles so that they could earn a decent wage and contribute to society.
Haritha V. Kumar, CEO, ASAP, and M.I. Sahadulla, chairman of the Healthcare Business Advisory Committee, spoke on the occasion.
Objective
The conclave was aimed at identifying emerging job roles in the health-care sector and focussed on improving employability through apprenticeship-linked training programme.
