Govt lens on franchise model as youth skilling scheme blips

The Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship has temporarily halted skilling target allocation to a few sectors, states and franchise centres for laying down guidelines and fixing accountability of training partners.
The move on re-examining the franchise ecosystem comes after three states -- Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan -- achieved their annual skilling targets under the PMKVY scheme way ahead of deadline, prompting an investigation into the reasons behind it.
An in-depth monitoring of the mushrooming growth of training centres revealed that in the states of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, majority of centres came up in franchise modes and in job roles with low capital investment requirements leading to skewness in the skilling ecosystem.

A skewed training ecosystem would have resulted in over skilling in some areas leading to massive scarcity of jobs and increased migration of job seeking youth.
On further scrutiny of franchise arrangements in these centres, it was found that the core function of training itself including entire infrastructure was outsourced in most places with key training provider having a rent seeking attitude and charging up to 40 per cent of revenue, just for providing access to Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) system.
"This is obviously having a deleterious impact on the quality of training in many of these institutes," the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship said.

Moreover, it said a field inspection of several of these franchise centres found that 46 per cent of the them are non- compliant with accreditation guidelines implying non-readiness to deliver quality training, in spite of being recommended for accreditation by Quality Council of India.
"In view of above, the target allocation to franchise centres have been temporarily stopped and the whole franchise ecosystem is being examined for laying down concrete guidelines clarifying the expected minimum roles, responsibilities and accountabilities of training partner and training centre under a franchise agreement, so that quality training can be ensured," the ministry said.