Raju favours single-point coordination mechanism for skill

HRD Minister M M Pallam Raju today favoured a single point coordination mechanism to facilitate faster progress in execution of a national vocational curriculum framework for developing skills of the youths in the country.
With the country setting a target of providing skills to 500 million youths by 2022, he urged the stakeholders to make a beginning and encouraged more to register with the National Vocational Educational Qualification Framework (NVEQF).
"HRD Ministry may also create a single point coordination mechanism to facilitate faster progress on these fronts," he said, inaugurating a skill development workshop through NVEQF.
The Minister, however, felt a lot of issues confronting the sector needs to be addressed.

They range from demand supply mismatch and poor quality of training to lack of infrastructure, shortage of quality trainers, relevance of skills and lack of standardisation.
Absence of labour market information system, clarity on industry skill requirement and low awareness of existing courses besides perceived lack of dignity are some of the fronts that have to be addressed, he said.

Raju underlined on improving the accreditation and certification systems and establishing an institutional mechanism for providing access to information on skill inventory on real time basis.
Noting that 70 million more people have to be imparted skills in the next five years, there is a need of concerted action with improvement in curriculum for skill development.

CEO of National Skill Development Corporation Dilip Chenoy said that though the skilling sector is growing at the rate of 33 per cent annually, "we have to increase it to 133 to 150 per cent if we want to take it to 500 million skilled hands by 2022".