BRICS Nations establish taskforces to augment skill development initiatives

A half day workshop was organized by FICCI on 1st April, 2017 to discuss and take forward the planned initiatives to strengthen skill development in Industry 4.0 as well as conventional skills. The workshop was led under the chairmanship of Mr. M.S. Unnikrishnan, MD & CEO, Thermax Group and Ms Shobha Mishra Ghosh, Additional Secretary General, FICCI.

The white paper on Skill Development for Industry 4.0 prepared by Roland Berger in partnership with FICCI carved out very specific recommendations such as assessing and mapping training methodologies; content and curriculum development; organising skill competitions among others. The aim of the workshop was to collectively work on any two recommendations suggested in the white paper.

Active participation of chairs, members and experts from Russia, India, China and South Africa led to a consensus to establish BRICS Skill Steering Committee. In addition it was proposed by India SDWG to also form a) taskforce for organising BRICS Skill Competition and b) Taskforce for Skills for Industry 4.0 (in which Training, certification and other focus areas will be formulated by its members. On voluntary basis, each country nominated their members to be part of BRICS Skill Steering Committee. A taskforce on BRICS Skill Fund was also discussed for which South Africa will take a lead.

The discussion at the workshop revolved around creating a proposal to submit to New Development Bank to establish Skill Fund; organising BRICS skill competitions every alternate year and collaboration opportunities for undertaking bilateral and multilateral projects for skill development in BRICS nations in order to learn from one another. Various stakeholders like government officials, industry stalwarts and academicians from all BRICS nations participated. Some of the companies who attended the workshop were National Skill Development Corporation, National Skill Development Agency, FESTO, Escorts Skill Academy, Siemens, CREDAI, BML Munjal University, Telecom Sector Skill Council, Capital Goods Sector Skill Council, Agency of Strategic Initiative, Russia, Beijing ARC Xinxing Science & Technology, China, Adcorp, South Africa and several others.‎