The State government has sought the views of corporate companies on the slowdown in IT industries and its repercussions on employees, said Priyank Kharge, Minister for Information Technology and Bio-Technology, on Monday.
Replying to a question by BJP member Ganesh Karnik in the Legislative Council, Mr. Kharge said the advent of new technologies in the industry and visa restrictions in countries such as the U.S., Australia and Singapore had added to the slowdown. “Although media reports have suggested that there are huge job losses in the IT sector, the enormity is yet to be assessed,” he said.
Keeping the current scenario in mind, the State government’s ‘Yuva Yuga’ programme to train 1.1 lakh youth in IT, electronics and animation will be launched in the next two months. The programme was announced in the budget this year, he said.
Pointing out that it is practically not possible to train engineers in the new technologies in one go, the Minister said: “We have been training engineering graduates and updating them in latest technologies. On May 15, we discussed the issue with Nasscom representatives and they too reiterated the need for implementing schemes to update skills of graduating engineers.”
Giving figures of direct job creation in the IT sector in the last three years in Karnataka, Mr. Kharge said there was a dip from 61,500 in 2014-2015 to 49,500 jobs in 2015-2016. But, it increased to 52,500 in 2016-17, he said.
To give a boost to the sector and create more jobs, the government has launched various initiatives, including Karnataka i4, Electronics System Design and Manufacturing, and startup policies. Besides, the State-run KEONICS has opened 254 training centres and had trained 25,100 youth in the last academic year, he said.
Apart from starting Centres of Excellence in Aerospace, data science, artificial intelligence, robotics and cyber security, the government has created a corpus of over ₹340 crore in the current budget for the purpose, he added.
