With the objective of engaging over 10 lakh apprentices over the next one year, the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) organised a virtual workshop with Central Public Sector Enterprises (CPSEs). At the workshop, Minister for Education, Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Dharmendra Pradhan called upon the CPSEs to explore innovative ways to drive skill development, including adopting Industrial Training Centres (ITCs), Jan Shikshan Sansthans (JSS) of their local areas, engage more apprentices, align their skilling framework with NSQF, and also leverage CSR to augment skill development efforts under the overall Skill India mission.
Rajeev Chandrashekhar, Minister of State, MSDE & MEITY said “Apprenticeship being one of the most sustainable model of skill development, should be extensively promoted by both MSDE and the management at CPSUs.
It was suggested that skilling be incentivised or made mandatory across direct and indirect workforces across all companies. This would ensure formal skilling and certification of the workforce under the Skill India Mission.
It was also suggested that the companies focus on fresh skilling as well as upskilling, reskilling and multiskilling, to enable the workforce to keep up with the ever changing demands of the job market.
Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship desires that all companies register themselves on the Skill India portal. All skill centres, be it company owned or contract-led training centres, are expected to ensure a single platform for data aggregation.
It was also advised that CPSEs should enhance the number of apprentices engaged by them to max 15 per cent of the total employee strength including contractual staff in the current band of 2.5 to 15 per cent.
The Ministry recommended that CPSEs should support skilling workplace convergence through Directorate Generation of Training’s (DGT) Dual System of Training (DST) Scheme/ Flexi MoU Scheme, participate in Training of Trainers (ToT) programmes, modernisation and development of curricula with focus on skilling for global requirement and also provide support to upgradation of labs, setting up of labs, development of infrastructure of National Skill Training Institutes (NSTIs)/ ITIs/Jan Shikshan Sansthan (JSS) centres and Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Kendras (PMKKs) under MSDE.
Involvement of CPSEs has been sought in innovative collaborations that will enable seamless flow of industry-ready trained manpower and eventually facilitate employment of certified skilled workers at PSUs. Subcontractors of CPSUs will be expected to hire certain percentage of certified skilled persons under their contract, engaging apprentices and training existing workers through recognition of prior learning (RPL) without disturbing their regular activities.
The virtual workshop was attended by CMDs, HR managers and CSR heads of over 100 CPSEs who shared their work on apprenticeship training and discussed opportunities and challenges in making the apprenticeship model a success in the country.
