DET, Siemens to formalise 100 million dollar tech-training pact

DET Director N Subbaiyan said the project will adopt a hub-andspoke model under which a centre of excellence with state-of-the-art facilities will be available to the participants. “This is an open-ended initiative which will include higher education institutions,” he said, outlining the elaborate arrangements required to roll out the program. 

Targeted at the youth, the project is a technical pact between DET and Siemens aimed at upskilling them. Already the presence of Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) in the state have created an ecosystem that have led to several collaborative partnerships with corporates such as Nissan, Ford, TVS and Maruti. “The arrangement with Siemens is to upskill engineering graduates and ITI pass-outs and equip them on the skill-front to handle high-end technology-intensive areas. These would enable opportunity for the youths to enter advanced specialized sectors such as aerospace,” Subbaiyan told DTNext. There will be five regional centres with a Single Point of Contact or a SPOC that will focus on upskilling essentially. Such a partnership will provide youths in our country a platform to work on the latest technologies, forge technical cooperation with higher institutions and this will also be part of the organisation’s corporate social responsibility. “We are in the process of signing up,” he said, responding to a query on the project’s expected roll-out. Apart from career progression, youths identified for the project will have the benefit of getting absorbed into the company itself or other companies depending on the outcome of their participation. 

“We are yet to go into the nitty-gritty of the project,” Subbaiyan said. This initiative comes at a time, when the National Skill Development Mission has the daunting task of covering skilling 500 million people by 2022. The country is facing a severe shortage of well-trained and skilled people. Less than 5 per cent of the 459 million workforce have benefited from formal training, a dismal figure compared to 96 per cent of Korea and 80 per cent of Japan’s trained workforce. 

Vocational institutions have crossed the five-lakh mark in China while in India they are still lingering around a few thousands. At a recent manufacturing summit of CII, Vikram Kapur, TN Principal Industries Secretary, had thrown light on the mounting challenge of skills gap. Given the digital era that is all pervasive, it is imperative to relook at the curriculum so that an effective delivery is possible. “When we talk of skill development there is a huge deficit as the ability to provide could be due to various factors, including geographic challenges. Technology should be leveraged to develop skills among youth so that upskilling and reskilling can be done through continuous education in their vocation or other necessary skills,” he opined. “Skills and knowledge are the driving forces of economic growth and social development for any country. Countries with higher and better levels of skills adjust more effectively to the challenges and opportunities of world of work. 

Potentially, the target group for skill development comprises all those in the labour force, including those entering the labour market for the first time (26 million annually), those employed in the organised sector (28 million) and those working in the unorganized sector (437 million) in 2009-10. The capacity of skill development programs is 3.1 million,” says the ministry of labour and employment in its annual report 2015-16. Meanwhile, a recent report of ASSOCHAM reveals that only 7 per cent of the MBA graduates are employable. Another consulting firm - Hay Group, in a report says 74 per cent of the business leaders and HR directors surveyed said they had hired graduates who did not have the necessary people skills due to a lack of choice. A 2016 Aspiring Minds National Employability Report for India adds that more than 80 per cent of India’s engineers are “unemployable”.