Mit einer Werbekampagne will Indiens Regierung für berufliche Qualifizierung werben und bei Jugendlichen das Interesse wecken, sich durch berufsbildende Maßnahmen für die Industrie zu qualifizieren.
Govt plans ad campaign to endorse skill education
The target is to prepare a workforce equipped with the skills required for industry jobs after attending courses.
The government plans to launch an advertising campaign to popularize skills training and attract youngsters to vocational courses that will equip them for jobs in industries ranging from automobiles and auto components to retail and real estate.
The target is to prepare a workforce equipped with the skills required for industry jobs after attending courses that are typically perceived as less glamorous than formal education streams.
National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), co-promoted by the finance ministry, is overseeing the initiative and has commissioned a market research firm to conduct a public perception survey on why people do not enroll for vocational courses and the problems they face in five states.
The survey report is expected to be released by the third week of June and the multi-media advertising campaign will start in July.
"Vocational skill education suffers from the poor perception problem. It's considered second to the formal education stream. This campaign will try to change that. It will be rolled out in July," said a spokesperson for the NSDC.
The government is targeting training some 500 million people by 2022 to equip them with vocational skills and provide an efficient workforce for industries that often complain about a severe shortage of 'employable' workers.
India's automobile sector alone faces a shortage of 300,000 skilled workers, according to a 2011 survey by the consulting company KPMG.
The pharma industry will need 2.5 million skilled professionals by 2022, more than double its current workforce of around 1.1 million, according to official estimates.
In the first year, the advertising campaign will run in Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Orissa and Tamil Nadu at a cost of Rs.42 crore, less than half the Rs.100 crore the government had earlier planned to spend.
The budget has been trimmed because of a funding crunch, a government official with knowledge of the development said on condition of anonymity.
In the 2013-14 annual budget, the government announced a Rs.1,000 crore corpus to give one million students Rs.10,000 each as an incentive to pursue skills training.
"In India, education is perceived as what is taught in the classrooms of traditional schools and colleges and training in specific skills is not considered an educational discipline," said Goutam Roy, chief operating officer, employability and skill development, at the Future Group.
"The skill campaign will target the qualified unemployed in urban India and not-eligible (not qualified for such kind of jobs) candidates in rural areas. The effort is to tell (people) that vocational education can give them a life of dignity," he said.
"Don't look at the amount Rs.42 crore, we have to understand that the government has a certain budget. But once the pilot campaign becomes a success, more funds will come and it will be expanded," said Roy, whose company has a tie-up with NSDC to impart training to some seven million people by 2022.
Roy said that industry partners gave a suggestion to NSDC's recently appointed chairman S. Ramadorai, who is also the vice-chairman of Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, to create a corpus from which students can take interest-free vocational training loans.
"We can have an arrangement with NSDC and students to pay back that money once candidates are employed," he said.