Sarbananda Sonowal, Minister of State, Skill Development, Entrepreneurship, Youth Affairs & Sports asked India Inc to play a bigger role in skilling India.

Addressing the two-day bi-annual event Sonowal said, “The target for National Skill Development Corporation  is to skill 3.3 million this year. It is absolutely necessary to ensure that the industry be made a major partner in skilling India and NSDC has been extremely successful in engaging and exponentially growing the efforts of the private sector.”

Commenting on the newly formed Ministry for Skill Development, Sonowal observed, “We are in the process of activating the Ministry of Skill Development, and are currently consulting with all major stakeholders including the private sector. We believe an effective and sustainable partnership between private and public sector would be crucial for this ambitious mission to be achieved. This Ministry will assist and enable in every possible way-new, creative and self-sustaining mechanisms to ensure that goals set by the Prime Minister for ‘Skill India’ are achieved.”

In a short span of less than five years since NSDC has been operational, more than two million youths have been skilled, more than half of whom are gainfully employed today. NSDC has approved the setting up of 136 training organisations with the potential to train over 83 million people over the next 10 years. As of date, there are over 2,856 training centres, 1150 of which are mobile, covering 368 districts, i.e., over 50 per cent of the districts in the country.

The meet also witnessed the signing of MoUs with UGC, Pune University, TNOU (Tamil Nadu), Directorate of Urban Development (NULM), Himachal Pradesh and UP Skill Development Mission (UPSDM).

Arvind Mayaram, Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, Union Finance Ministry, said that there is a need to analyse in-depth, have a customized approach sector wise and as the Prime Minister says we should not only focus on skilling for the country but also for the global shortage of skills.