Tata Motors plans to skill 40,000 people in three to four years across all plants, subsidiaries and dealer networks.
As part of a unique initiative to promote the Skill India Mission, Tata Motors and the Automotive Skills Development Council (ASDC) certified the first batch of trainees under their collaborative skills development and certification programme.
Introduced in 2016, the programme is currently training around 4000 apprentices, out of which 168 trainees (154 boys and 14 girls) with over 90 per cent success ratio, at the Sanand Plant of Tata Motors, have been awarded the ASDC certification in automotive assembly skills. The trainees, after completion of their first year of training at the Tata Motors’ Skill Development Centre were assessed through an online test, a practical examination and a viva conducted by the external ASDC-nominated assessor.
Trainees, who successfully passed these examinations, were felicitated at the certificates award ceremony in the presence of top officials from Tata Motors, ASDC and NEEM partners at Sanand.
The first batch of trainees was awarded the ASDC certification in the presence of Gajendra Chandel, chief human resource officer, Tata Motors, Sunil Chaturvedi, chief executive officer, ASDC and Rajesh Khatri, vice president-operations, passenger vehicles, Tata Motors.
Commenting on the occasion, Chandel said, “This programme has been diligently put together by Tata Motors’ Skills Development Centre, in association with NEEM service provider and ASDC.”
He shared that a large batch of trainees, both girls and boys, mostly from rural areas and small towns were inducted through the ‘earn & learn’ mode under the National Employability Enhancement Mission (NEEM), which is part of the Government’s Skill India Mission. He also explained that with the evolution in automobile manufacturing and service, the need for skilled workforce will continue to increase exponentially, with a huge potential to generate large-scale employment opportunities.
“However, for the youth to be able to take up these opportunities, it is important they have the mindset of quality, productivity, safety and discipline coupled with the right technical skills, which our Skills Development Centre as well as NEEM partner imparted very systematically during the programme duration. Sowing the seeds of learning has short-, mid- and long-term benefits, and we at Tata Motors foresee this as the foundation to prepare them as well as the Indian automotive industry for future growth,” he said.
Chaturvedi also added, “The automotive industry is a significant generator of employment in India. Till date, the ASDC has contributed to the development of the automotive industry by creating 200 Qualification Packs (QPs) comprising 363 unique National Occupational Standards (NOS) and total of 946 NOS related to the automotive sector. Tata Motors’ partnership with ASDC will further enhance the expertise in conducting research, developing training course curricula and certifying trainers and students, in consultation with experts from the automotive industry and the academia.”
Tata Motors has been at the forefront in creating the right set of talent pool for the automobile engineering and manufacturing industry. With a first-of-its-kind MoU with the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), Tata Motors has signed over six such agreements, over the past few years, with leading institutes and organisations, to develop skilled and highly competent future-ready manpower.