‘JK facing serious crunch of skilled labour’

Srinagar, Oct 12: Highlighting the need to upscale skill training programme in the State, Advisor to Governor, Khurshid Ahmed Ganai Friday said in contemporary world skilled youth serves as the “backbone” to develop a strong nation.
The Advisor said youth with their respective skills in varied trades including electricians, welding, plumbing, bricklaying, chef, have a bright future if they put their skills to good use. He said this skilled manpower could not only address the unemployment issue of the State, by creating their own jobs, but their skills could greatly address the ‘supply and demand issue’ of the State as well.
The Advisor expressed these views while reviewing the functioning of the State Board of Technical Education, Directorate of Technical Education, and J&K State Skill Development Mission.
Giving an example of the future waiting for skilled labour, the Ganai recalled that recently in a seminar, State’s leading hotelier Mushtaq Ahmed Chaya also raised the concern that the State is facing a serious crunch of skilled manpower. Ganai said that the hotelier assured if hotel industry is provided with skilled work force they would be absorbed in the State facing dearth of skilled manpower.
Ganai said youth in State need to think out of the box as the demand for skilled labour has phenomenally increased across the world in the last few decades. Giving an example of developed countries who are trying to lure skilled labour to come to their countries, the Advisor said such is the relevance of skilled labour in countries like Australia and Canada that they are even offering permanent residency to people with skills that are in their demand list.
The Advisor said all the stakeholders including academic institutes, especially ITIs and Polytechnics, corporate sector, and government institutes need to come together in creating a skilled man force in the State.
He said it is alright to hold seminars and workshops to make people aware with various schemes and training, however, the thrust of training institutes, especially Skill Development Mission, should be to provide actual training in big numbers of State youth.
“There should be a limit to soft talk. We have to give hard training to people in different trades, which are extremely useful to people,” the Advisor said.
Ganai also urged for upgradation of training institutes, saying the to widen horizon it is imperative that our training institutes adapt modern curriculum, and add new trades like chef, beauty therapists, and IT to their old disciplines.
The Advisor also suggested in providing incentivize training, under which a trainee, selected through an aptitude test, would be provided with some sort of stipend money to take care of his out of pocket expenditures in his first year at college.
He assured that Governor led administration would be more than willing to support the various forms of initiatives taken under skill development programme, are aimed at empowering of State youth.
He urged on the concerned to ensure that once trained in the specialized trade, the youth should be provided with a platform to put his skills to use.
“Once a good number of youths get trained, a mechanism would be created so that people who want to avail their services could readily get access to them,” the Advisor said.
Secretary Technical Education Ajit Kumar Sahu, Director Technical Education Anoo Malhotra, Secretary State Board of Technical Education, Mehmood Ahmed Khan, Director Skill Development Mission Peer Ghulam Nabi and other concerned were present in the meeting.