Skilling a key priority area for govt: Pradhan

Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan today said skill development and promoting entrepreneurship is a key priority area for the government and it is linking this initiative with other programmes like upgrade of rail network and providing all households with power and cooking gas supply.
"We will be connecting 40 million households with electricity within 300 days by the end of 2018 and that will require skilling of manpower.
"One new strategy of the Modi government is how to scale up and lower costs also by skilling the manpower," Pradhan said.
The oil minister, who also holds charge of the skill development and entrepreneurship ministry, said even connecting households with cooking gas supply at such a large scale requires huge manpower at distribution and various other levels.

Referring to the work done by Piyush Goyal as power minister earlier, Pradhan said electrification initiatives also lead to huge job creation and opportunities for skilling. Similarly, the upgrade of rail network also requires skilling of manpower.
At the same panel, Goyal said the government is working hard on upgrading the railways and his aim is to bring back the charm to rail travel.
Goyal said job creation is no more limited to the government and what it is doing is facilitating skill development and entrepreneurship and that in turn is creating jobs.
Deloitte India and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) organised the panel discussion at the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meet at Davos on the topic 'Demographic advantage and skills opportunity in India'.