Over 8.5 lakh youths skilled in Odisha in past four years

BHUBANESWAR: The state government has claimed to have imparted skill development training to around 8.5 lakh youths in four years and targets to train more 2.5 lakh youths in next one year.

“The state government has set the target to impart skill training to around 11 lakh youths within five years starting from 2014-15 under

Chief Minister's Employment Generation Programme

(CMEGP). We have already skilled around 8.5 lakh,” said skill development and technical education secretary Sanjay Singh after a high-level meeting here.

According to an official statement, the youths have been trained in various ITIs, diploma institutions, engineering colleges and skill development centers.

The

Odisha Skill Development Authority

(

OSDA

) created in 2016 has also imparted skill training to youths through special agencies in the major trades like electrical, apparel & garment, construction, ICT, medical and nursing, plastic processing, refrigeration and air conditioning, production and manufacturing, hospitality, automotive, fabrication and fashion designing.

Chief secretary A P Padhi directed the OSDA to focus on youth mobilization, quality training and more placements in the coming year.

While more than 1000 youths had selected through campus placement from various ITIs since last one year, the skill development department has also organized about 23 job fairs through which over 7000 youths got placement, said an official source.

The state government also claimed that the rate of girl/women enrolment in government ITIs have been increased to 12.8 per cent in 2017-18 from 7.1 per cent in 2016-17.

While Odisha currently has 49 government ITIs with intake capacity of over 17,000 youths, 22 more new industrial training centres are under construction. In 2016-17, five ITIs of Odisha at Berhampur, Cuttack, Rourkela, Hirakud, Takatpur in Baripada were among top 20 ITIs in the country, said an official source.

Matters related to placement linked training programme, establishment of skill development centers organization of job fairs, online registration of job seekers, establishment of world skill center at Bhubaneswar, organizing skill competition were discussed during the meeting.