Labour Min to set up skill centres for job-seekers

Amid signs of the global economic recession impacting the job market, the Labour Ministry is mulling setting up IT-led Skill Development Centres in the country to provide training to employment-seekers.

The centres will be set up under a pilot project on PPP mode across the country, principal advisor (skill development mission) of Planning Commission Jayati Chandra said, adding these are expected to come up by the middle of the year.

"The aim is to ultimately upscale the pilot project -- with or without corrections -- to something like 50,000 skill development centres in the country," she told PTI on the sidelines of a seminar on skill development and training organised by Assocham here.

She said the centres would be able to provide "new training on a ladder of skills with formal certification or without formal certification depending on the level of training and the job requirement that is being targeted."

The Ministry's move comes even as a report prepared by it revealed that half a million people in the country lost jobs between October and December last year.

The Labour Minister, however, noted the losses were not as acute as was being anticipated.

S Krishnan, Special Secretary to the Ministry told reporters that "since most of our industries are driven by domestic demand... It (the loss) is not as acute as one would have expected it to be."

Chandra, on the other hand, expressed hope that the signs of recovery in the global market can be expected around September and October this year.

Speaking on budget provisions for the upcoming centres, she said provisions have already been made in the Eleventh Plan for the skill development sector. The projection for the sector, she said, is at around Rs 22,000 crore.

Chandra sought leveraging on the existing government assets and triplicating their usage for the project.

She also said that district information centres can be used as knowledge imparting centres for information dissemination and skill development.