In an effort to enhance skilling of students, around 12,582 faculties from government engineering colleges and 7,835 faculties from arts and science colleges from across Tamil Nadu have been trained in the last one year under the Naan Mudhalvan programme, an initiative of Tamil Nadu Skill Development Corporation (TNSDC).
These faculty have been instrumental in training over 4.6 lakh engineering students and over 8.5 lakh arts and science students in the State. Till date, under this programme, 483 engineering colleges and 861 arts and science colleges have been covered, according to data provided by M. Jayaprakasan, Chief Executive Officer, Naan Mudhalvan.
Talking on the sidelines of the Tamil Nadu Skills Conference on “Empowering Talent” organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Mr. Jayaprakasan said along with students, faculty also needed training. “We will be assessing and certifying them also,” he said. As on date, the Naan Mudhalvan portal had 1.93 million registered users and over 40 million total views.
The department has come out with an initiative called Factory Skill Schools (FSS) model. “FSS is for medium and large scale industries and industry associations that have the requisite infrastructure to conduct skill training within their establishment,” Mr. Jayaprakashan said. “Post training, the trainee can be placed within that company or sister concerns or associated establishments. This allows trainees to get exposed to the industrial atmosphere and promotes on the job training,” he said.
Making an appeal to the industry, he said: “We want the industry to join hands with the government to work together to support the massive skilling programme. With the recently launched skill registry portal, the aim is to create a demand driven market from the current supply driven market. The registry has information such as district, sector and college-wise information of students who are available for recruitment.”
Milan Wahi, vice-chairman, CII Chennai Zone and managing director, Lotte India, cautioned that in the next five years there would be a huge shortage of skilled workforce and its time we look at the right set of skills. Mr. Wahi pointed out that there would be a huge competition from other States (in terms of skilled workforce).
“Globally, of the total workforce in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM), women have only 28% representation. The focus should be training and skilling more women in technology by promoting skilling, entrepreneurship, and market linkage support to women building technology start-ups and tech-driven businesses,” said Hema Mani, chairperson, CII TN Skills Conference and regional director, HR, Lennox International.
P. Kaniappan, managing director, ZF Commercial Vehicles Ltd, said: “The Naan Mudhalvan scheme is showing remarkable results with every student automatically registered and entitled for skill development courses that they are keen on.”
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