Rural development ministry to conduct skill gap study in Odisha

The Union ministry of rural development would conduct a skill gap study in Odisha for manpower planning, identifying opportunities and assessing skill development needs.

“There is a need to provide skill training on the basis of skill gap study that will address the needs of the market. Instead of stereotype skill training, there is a need to find out new sectors that will attract the youths and help them in bagging a job in the state itself. The Odisha government will immensely benefit from the study”, said a government official.

The focus of the study will be on the demand in the sea food sector and unorganized sector. The urorganised sector will include cooks, bedside attendants, housekeeping who have huge demand in the country and abroad. There is ample scope of employment in the sea food sector for processing and packaging of sea food as Odisha is a coastal state. The report will be submitted in four months.

The proposed study will support the state government’s target to skill 0.8 million in three years. The Odisha government plans to set up eight advanced skill training institutes with an outlay of Rs 1,000 crore. The eight advanced skill training institutes will come up in different parts of the state .

The newly formed Odisha Skill Development Authority, with MindTree’s co-founder Subroto Bagchi as its chairman, is adopting a set of 20 goals over the next 18 months under different categories. The focus is mainly on three key areas in the next 18 months. These are revamping of existing ITIs, partnering with Asian Development Bank (ADB) to set up eight state of the art advanced skill training institutes and working with short term skill partners to build significant scale.   It may be noted, against the target of skilling 1.1 million youths in five years from 2014-15, 0.33 million youths have already been trained as on March 2016.