Date:17/03/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/03/17/stories/2008031750810500.htm

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Government plans to upgrade some ITIs

Special Correspondent

CHENNAI: The State Government intends to upgrade some of its Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) as centres of excellence in the next few years to meet the demand for skilled workforce, according to Labour and Employment Secretary Ramesh Kumar Khanna said.

Delivering the keynote address at the Tamil Nadu Skills Forum, organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), he said: “Currently we face two issues: how to upgrade the skills of existing workers; and how to make school dropouts capable for jobs. Industries should come forward to help government agencies tackle these issues. Besides, we are planning to train over 50,000 youths shortly under various government initiatives and provide them 60-460 hours of short-term courses in various trades.”

B. Santhanam, Chairman, CII National Committee on Human Resources and Industrial/Employee Relations, said if India had to impart employable skills to its 440 million youths, it needed simple, large-scale, scalable and standard models of skills development.

The challenge, he felt, was in providing skills training for grass-roots workers in agriculture.

Manikam Ramaswami, vice-chairman, CII, Tamil Nadu, said there was an acute shortage of skilled manpower in the textile sector in the State. However, the sector evolved a model for training employees in-house not only in skills relevant to the textile sector but also in the IT and automotive sectors.