Date:15/03/2006 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2006/03/15/stories/2006031503730400.htm

Back 8 firms sign up for National Skills Registry

Moumita Bakshi Chatterjee

Companies include Satyam, TCS, Mphasis

The filter
The Registry was launched by Nasscom in mid-January to filter out errant employees and reduce the risk of fraud-related activities.
The centralised database will have information about employees' professional, educational background.
Five points of sales appointed for registration, to cover 38 locations.

New Delhi , March 14

ICICI OneSource, Franklin Templeton International and Zenta Group have signed up for the National Skills Registry programme, taking the total number of signatories, for the first-ever centralised database of employees of IT services and BPO companies, to eight.

"So far eight companies have joined the programme. These include Satyam Computer Services, Mphasis, CMC, TCS, GE Capital International, ICICI OneSource, Franklin Templeton International and Zenta Group," Mr Gagan Rai, Managing Director and CEO of National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL) Database Management, which is responsible for managing the registry, told Business Line.

"With various companies now coming on board, we expect their employees to become a part of the programme and get to themselves registered," he said.

Centralised database

The National Skills Registry was launched by Nasscom in mid-January to effectively filter out errant employees, and reduce the risk of fraud-related activities in the IT industry. The Registry would be a centralised database of information about the employees' professional and educational background, and has been specially designed to ensure authenticity of data through independent verification and biometric identification of individuals.

IT and BPO aspirants and existing industry employees can go and register themselves either online or through empanelled points of sales, and provide details including their name, educational qualification, professional qualifications, previous employment information, photograph and fingerprint on the NSDL database. There is a validation history associated with each section that would reflect the details of the validation. This would be charged at Rs 250 with an annual membership charge of Rs 50, to keep the access alive.

Points of sale

So far, NSDL Database Management Ltd has appointed five points of sales, which would be responsible for providing services of registration. Together the points of sales entities — Alankrit Assignments Ltd, Integrated Financial Ltd, Kotak Securities Ltd, ICICI Bank, Geojit Financial Services — would cover 38 locations across 11 cities. While Delhi has six of these centres, Mumbai has nine centres and Bangalore eight centres, he pointed out.

NSDL has also empanelled background-checking agencies including Advantage Quest, KPMG, Finserv, Pres Enterprises, Top Securities and Onicra Credit Rating to run the required verification checks.

IT and BPO employees can approach any of these agencies and ask them to run verification checks for which the charges would be Rs 1,500-2,000, or the same can be done by their existing or prospective employers after an authorisation by the employee.