Kaushalya Karnataka Mission: Mysuru has stiff target to meet

On June 24, Mysuru had registered 24,094 candidates

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s home district Mysuru has the stiff target of enrolling 25,000 candidates under the Kaushalya Karnataka Mission – the State government’s ambitious employability programme.

Though Mysuru got off to a slow start and had enrolled no more than 8,500 candidates or 34% of the target by June 9 after the programme was kickstarted on May 15, the district had made enough progress subsequently with officials fanning out in different places including educational institutions to enrol people.

The Kaushalya Karnataka Mission seeks to enrol people in the age group of 18 to 35 to enhance their employability through skill development.

By Saturday, the pace of registrations in Mysuru district had picked up and reached 24,094. D. Randeep, Deputy Commissioner, was confident of Mysuru not only crossing the target but also reaching 30,000 by the end of June. By the time the training programmes for the enrolled candidates begin in mid-July, the district administration was hopeful of crossing 35,000.

While Mysuru was yet to reach 25,000 registrations, as many as 20 other districts in the State had crossed their target. A few districts in North Karnataka such as Raichur, Gadag, Kalaburagi, Ballari and Bagalkot had achieved more than double their targets with Raichur leading the pack with more than 400% registrations against its target of 15,500.

Officials said the registration target in the Chief Minister’s home district is the third highest in the State after Bengaluru and Belagavi. While Bengaluru has to register 93,400 candidates, Belagavi had long crossed its target of 36,400.

The targets for each district had been fixed by the newly created Department of Skill Development, Entrepreneurship and Livelihood taking into consideration a range of aspects such as population and backwardness.

Interested youngsters can still enrol for the programme by accessing the Karnataka Kaushalya Mission website www.kaushalkar.com .

Though most of the candidates registered under the programme so far either had passed either SSLC, PUC or Bachelors, officials said even school and college dropouts could register for the scheme.

“Our officials visit various places including railway stations and bus stands to identify dropouts and register them. Invariably, such people do not have email accounts and are not carrying their Aadhaar card. We create email accounts for them, ask them to get their Aadhaar details and register them,” an official said.