New Delhi, 29 August 2014: National Consultative Workshop on “Industry-Career Centre-ITI collaboration” was held at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi today. Union Minister for Labour & Employment, Mines and Steel, Narendra Singh Tomar and Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Skill Development & Entrepreneurship, Youth Affairs and Sports, Sarbananda Sonowal co-chaired the inaugural session. Ministers of the concerned departments from the States and senior officers of Central and State governments attended the workshop.
While addressing the gathering, Tomar said, “India’s youth population is the largest in the world. Therefore, providing employment and imparting skills to them is a huge challenge and opportunity. Centre and states have to work together in this direction. Central government can formulate and simplify laws and policies, facilitate sharing of best practices and suggest way forward. But, states will have to take the lead in speedy implementation and execution on the ground level”.
In his address, Sonowal said, “Skilling India is the need of the hour and is a high priority area for the central government. He lauded the initiatives taken by Ministry of Labour & Employment to meet skill needs of the country. He emphasised the need to act swiftly for bringing about a greater degree of convergence in the norms of various skill development schemes of states, with provision for relaxation in case of states with geographical challenges like North East & Hills.”
The workshop aimed at finalizing models and frameworks for enhancing employability and entrepreneurship in youth, and meeting the emerging skill needs of industry.
During the day-long workshop, participants deliberated on various issues. These included re-establishing brand equity of ITIs, setting up Model ITIs, skill upgradation of unorganized sector workers, restructuring employment services and setting up career centres, establishing National Career Service portal, framing National Employment Policy and making policy framework for National Career Services, recognition of prior learning for mainstreaming informal skills of construction workers, last mile employability training in soft skills and computer literacy to youth and job seekers through career centres.
