Mumbai (Maharashtra) : Although its target of imparting job-oriented skills to 11 lakh youths before 2018 to help them secure employment, the Maharashtra government has managed to train only 15,649 youths after one and-a-half years. After signing 24 MoUs in various sectors, the Department of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship has set a target of training minimum 2.5 to 3 lakh youth every year, officials claim.
Principal Secretary Deepak Kapoor said that after the Make-In-India week his department had signed 20 memorandum of understanding (MoUs) to train 7.3 lakh youths before 2018, and recently four more MoUs were signed increasing their target to nearly 11 lakh.
“All MoUs were studied in detail by a high-level team of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the department, to chalk out a common strategy to approach signatories and bring them on one platform to prepare a common action plan,” Kapoor said.
On the current status of the MoUs, Kapoor said the agreements with UNDP and Tata Trusts and JSW have reached advanced stages of implementation, while an MoU with the Bharat Forge, Bosch and MT Educare was signed recently. Kapoor said, “An MoU was signed with a leading automobile firm Volkswagen for enhancing the ITIs and for providing better output in the automobile sector.”
“We discussed the support needed from the state government to achieve the skill target and there is a special component for women. Just three weeks back we have signed an MoU with Lok Mangal group, which only trains women,” he added.
Of the 24 MoUs signed by the state government till date, 21 have been successfully implemented, three are still pending. The three companies, include Ola, Uber and Gujarat-based Namaste ji.
While there is an on going tussle between Ola, Uber and the Black and Yellow taxi, the transport department is framing a policy for the Ola, Uber cab services. Unless their regulation are framed the two MoUs cannot be implemented.
About Namaste Ji, the state government is skeptical to implement this MoU, as the company has demanded for land from the state and BMC in different wards of the city to set up bill collection centres.
“We have signed MoUs with only those companies who have done backward integration and assured us of providing jobs to the trained youth. We have made it clear, that we are aiming at providing employment to 70 per cent of the total youth trained every year. As far as the figure of 15,649 is concerned, it is only up to March 2016, the latest figure of youth trained will be compiled only by January 2017,” added Kapoor.
According to Kapoor, Maharashtra is the only state in the country which is working with majority of private sector for skill development. He said that the Skill Development and Entrepreneurship department is not depending on the government funds.
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