The government is gearing up to train over 500 million youths in various job skills, Union Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Rajeev Pratap Rudy said here on Sunday. Speaking to The Hindu , after inspecting the facilities at the government Industrial Training Institute (ITI), the Union Minister said the country had a poor record of having about just 3 per cent of skilled labour when compared to other nations such as China and Japan, where the percentage was over 80 per cent.
Mr. Pratap Rudy was accompanied by Visakhapatnam MP K. Haribabu and MLA P. Vishnu Kumar Raju.
The Union Minister was here to select a suitable site for setting up a Skill Development Centre and in the process inspected the three State-run ITIs located at Kancharapalem and Gajuwaka and two private institutions, According to Mr. Rudy, the Skill Development Centre concept was the brainchild of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a separate Ministry for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship was set-up to take the idea further.
With the MLC election code in force, the Minister was tight-lipped on the funding and other initiatives, but said ITIs, which were earlier under the Ministry of Labour, were brought under the Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Ministry for better focus on skill development and making the workforce ready for the world.
