On a Skilling Spree!

Skilling the labour is priority on the agenda of industry and the Government, and modernisation and rapid growth vital for the export-based textile industry depend solely on the progress of this new drive. An ITJ Report sizes up the mission of this skilling spree!

It´s skilling time, in India! The Government and the industry seem to have agreed unanimously on the importance of raising the stock of skilled labour in all the industries for the benefit of boosting the economy. Never have been the skilling efforts given, particularly to the textile industry, as much importance as of now , and the textile industry, keen to push itself ahead in its modernisation drive, does not want to miss the bus. ¨Though the industry is doing reasonably fine as far as availability of skilled workforce is concerned but to keep up the future growth the industry will need 2.2 crore skilled workforce by 2022,¨ says, Dilip Chenoy, CEO & MD of the National Skill Development Council (NSDC), which is spearheading a new mission to skill the labour across the industries in India.

NSDC is down to the brass tacks. ¨NSDC has last year facilitated the creation of Sector Skill Councils in Apparel and Textiles which has standardised 56 job roles in textiles and 25 job roles in apparel sector. These councils will work to determine the most common job roles in each sector, the criteria an individual must be trained on to fulfill such a job role, and to encourage new training providers to affiliate with the NSDC and train students up to these standards,¨ says Chenoy.

Under the PM´s ambitious project ´Skill India, Successful India´, the Government aims to train over 40 crore people in India in different skills by 2022. National HRD Network is making valuable efforts to support this initiative by creating a thought leadership amongst key partners like education institutions and industry.

The Government has recently launched Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojna (PMKVY) with an outlay of Rs 1,500 crore. This would be the flagship scheme for skill training of youth to be implemented by the new Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship through NSDC. The scheme would cover 24 lakh persons. Skill training would be done based on National Skill Qualification Framework (NSQF) and industry led standards. Under the scheme, a monetary reward is given to the trainees on assessment and certification by third party assessment bodies. Average monetary reward would be around Rs 8,000 per trainee.

¨Out of the total outlay of Rs 1,500 crore, Rs 1,120 crore will be spent on skill training of 14 lakh youth. Special emphasis has been made on recognition of prior learning for which an amount of Rs 220 crore have been provided. Thirty eight sectors will be covered under the scheme and textiles and apparel will be one of them,¨ adds Chenoy. NSDC has created a skill ecosystem for the textile industry through its strong network of NSDC training partners lead by the Textile Sector Skill Council. Till date NSDC has trained 55,274 people in the textile and apparel sector. NSDC Board has approved five training partners who provide trainings in textile and apparel. The Textile SSC in textiles is expected to affiliate 577 textile mills over the next 10 years as Training partners to certify about 3,770 trainers and train 11.6 lakh people in more than 360 job roles.

According to JV Rao, CEO, Textile Sector Skill Council (TSC), at present about 24 ministries at the Centre operate skill development schemes with their own budgets and systems of accountability. In addition to these, all State Governments have skill development missions. This diversity ensures the delivery of services to various groups, but it risks inefficiencies in spending. The spending in many of these schemes focuses on inputs – starting with the number of classrooms built or refurbished, equipment b