Government to rope in agencies to bridge the gap

BHUBANESWAR: With the State’s requirement for skilled manpower for the Twelfth Plan period pegged at a million, the newly- created Department of Employment, Technical Education and Training (DETET) has a tough task ahead. The existing capacity of the training institutes in the State is too small to meet the huge skilled manpower demand. The Government has taken the initiative to rope in reputed agencies having expertise in skill upgradation and capacity building to bridge the gap. This was revealed at a high-level meeting chaired by Chief Secretary BK Patnaik.  As per the World Bank assessment, the State is poised for a significant economic turnaround. The State’s economy is now on a higher growth trajectory. Having put its fiscal house in order, the State is attracting a sizeable private investment during the last couple of years.  About 470 projects are under different stages of implementation and the total investment in these projects is estimated at $ 125 billion. This has created enormous employment opportunities and there will be a need for more skilled manpower. The new department has been created for increasing manpower skill upgradation strategies in the State.  The Government has set a target for training of a million youth during 12th Five Year Plan period and facilitating placement of at least 75 per cent of them in different sectors.   The existing 79 government training institutes with an intake capacity of 16,223 and 920 private institutes with 98,898 intake capacity will generate skilled manpower of about 1.15 lakh annually. The Government has planned to set up an additional 41 institutes with 7,885 seats and another 46 training institutes under public-private partnership (PPP) mode with 7,079 seats.  Besides, expression of interest (EoI) was received from six agencies for providing vocational training and the skill training programme will be implemented through the select agencies during the current financial year, the meeting was told.  It was also decided that capacity of State Employment Mission will be strengthened and district employment offices will be integrated with Employment Mission for carrying the works of the Mission at the district-level.  Activities of the National Rural Employment Mission will also be integrated to provide linkage up to block and panchayat level. State Employment Mission will be directly linked to National Skill Development Corporation for carrying on skill development activities, said a senior officer.  Meanwhile, the State Employment Mission has identified qualitative training providers operating at national level to do the job of skill training and these agencies will be requested to open their branches in the State. The Chief Secretary also directed the department to enforce supervision mechanism and ensure high quality infrastructure and  training in the training institutes operating in the State.