In an effort to bridge the gap between demand and supply of manpower requirements and to help the State government achieve its aim of becoming a $1 trillion economy by 2030, the Tamil Nadu Skill Development Corporation (TNSDC) is realigning programmes and strategies, according to latest industry standards and requirements.
“The working ecosystem has changed from a decade ago. So now, the vision of the government is to skill according to the needs of the industry. We are now asking industries to come forward and tell us what their requirements are,” J. Innocent Divya, Managing Director of TNSDC, said.
The primary focus of the TNSDC is to bring more industries into the training ecosystem. "If any industry wants people with specific skills, they can come to us and we will help with training. And post training, they can hire them. This will help companies get exactly what they are looking for,” Ms. Divya said.
Looking at all the sector-specific policies, rolled out in the last one year by the government, everything points to skilling and training. So the TNSDC is in touch with the Guidance Bureau, the nodal agency that has been instrumental in bringing investment into the State, to understand what companies are looking for when it comes to manpower. Currently, there are 300-plus training partners and around 450 training centres have been empaneled.
The TNSDC is also looking to set up more centres of excellence for skilling, upskilling and reskilling. “We have come out with apex skill development centres for construction and infrastructure and logistics and healthcare. We are working on one in the automobile space. We are now looking at industry participation in these sectors,” Ms. Divya said.
Language training
The department will soon be rolling out language training for engineering students. To start with, it will be offering Japanese, German and French. "Today, the State is home to several Japanese and German firms and an engineering student with knowledge of a particular language, will be of demand. We will study how this works and based on that, we will roll this out to arts and science colleges too,” Divya said.
A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed recently by the British Council and TNSDC for providing training in soft skills. The TNSDC is also studying a database of school dropouts, collated from the school education department, and figuring out ways to offer skills and training to them.
According to data provided by the TNSDC, in the last one year, around 59,143 candidates registered and 45,825 of them were skilled. Every year, around 250 to 600 disabled people also get skilled.
