Skill and employment sector calls for job creation, GenAI courses

During a pre-Budget consultation with Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, industry representatives related to skill and employment emphasised the need to take measures for job creation and provide budgetary support to encourage students and professionals to pursue GenAI courses.

“There is significant potential to meet global human resource demands by establishing (international) language schools and colleges in India, which would create vast opportunities. We have also requested policy and budgetary support to incentivise students and professionals to undertake GenAI courses,” said Sarvesh Agrawal, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Internshala.

Gayathri Vasudevan, Trustee at Sambhav Foundation, said the meeting focused largely on optimising the utilisation of existing funds.

“We discussed how the cess collected by construction welfare boards and district mining funds could be better utilised. Additionally, there is a need to strengthen both government and private Industrial Training Institutes,” she said.

Vasudevan further emphasised on bridging the gap among education, employment and skills development.

“There is a need to address digital poverty in government educational institutions. While the New Education Policy (NEP) aims to tackle this issue, specific provisions are required,” she added.

Anshuman Magazine, chairman and CEO of Commercial Real Estate Services said he sought financial incentives for employers who re-skill their employees, along with policy measures to encourage such initiatives.

Suchita Dutta, ED of India Staffing Federation, emphasised the need for providing enhanced benefits to women employees to facilitate their return to the workforce after maternity leave. “Additionally, we urged the finance minister to reduce the goods and services tax (GST) slab for employment service providers from 18 per cent to 5 per cent. Furthermore, we proposed production-lined incentive (PLI)-like benefits to encourage new job creation,” she added.

The meeting was attended by senior officials from the finance ministry, skill development and entrepreneurship ministry, and labour ministry, along with Alkah N. Sharma, director of the Institute for Human Development (IHD).

Others present were Jintendra Hakkar, chairman of the Constitutional Advisory Council at CREDAI; Raj Nehru, vice-chancellor of Shri Vishwakarma Skill University; Manish Sabharwal, chairman of TeamLease Services Limited; Susheela Venkataraman, director of SGBS at Unnati Foundation; Gyathri Vasudevan, co-founder & CEO of LabourNet; and Mohit Soni, CEO of Media and Entertainment Skill Council.