The Government is gearing up to train over 500 million youth in various trades for the job market spread across the world, said Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Rajeev Pratap Rudy.
Speaking to The Hindu, after inspecting the facilities at the Government Industrial Training Institute (ITI), here on Sunday, he said that the country had a very 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 is over 80.
The Minister was accompanied by Visakhapatnam Member of Parliament K. Haribabu and Visakha North MLA Vishnu Kumar Raju.
The Minister was here to select a suitable site for setting up a Skill Development Centre and in the process inspected the 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 that ITIs, which were earlier under the Ministry of Labour was brought under the newly formed Skill Development and Entrepreneurship ministry for better focus on skill development and making the workforce ready for the world.
Giving a brief detail about the SDC, he said that the centres will be part of the ITI or could even be independent ones, which will focus on short-term value addition courses varying from two to six months.
“The SDCs will not only focus on adding values to the existing technical courses that are imparted by the ITIs, but will focus on other entrepreneurial courses related to sectors such as health, retail, beauty, hospitality and tourism,” he said.
Principal of Government ITI M. Gurunadheswara Rao said that in the three districts of Visakhapatnam, Vizianagaram and Srikakulam there were 16 government institutes and about 98 private ones.
