The Skill Development Policy has been sent to the Cabinet for consideration and view will be taken once Prime Minister come back from his US visit .This was disclosed by Smt. Sudha Pillai, Secretary, Ministry of Labour & Employment, Government of India on the sidelines of the Conference of State Secretaries on Skill Development organized by PHD Chamber in the capital today.

While inaugurating the conference Smt Pillai said that 1396 ITI’s are to be upgraded to make the skills imparted bankable and enhance the employability of the students. She reiterated that Vocationalisation of education and training through ITI would remain to be a part of skill development policy.  However, she pointed out the difficulty is in getting updated data.  Most of the time on skill formation her department has to work on outdated data.  She requested for the help of the corporates in updating the data and forwarding it to the government in time.   To sharpen the policy frame work we have to have “annual figures which will reflect the ground level reality”. Mentioning that the data collection on skill development is a difficult task as there is absence of data from SMEs employ less than 25 people.  It is necessary that a fool proof reporting system be made to have updated information.

Smt Pillai mentioned that 1500 new ITI’s being set up under public-private-partnership under this regime.  This she said would give a definite push to the employment opportunities.

Smt Pillai further added that Skill formation should start earlier and fifth standard should be the ideal trigger point to inculcate various vocations.  Presently, broadly such activities are undertaken from 10 standards which is too late as 50% of students drop out till class eight.

The primary objective of the Conference was to discuss the State wise implementation agenda and action plan for skill development and preparedness of the states for facilitating multiple modes of delivery and revamping of ITI’s with PPP. PHD Chamber suggested at that the Chief Minister’s of all the States to consider setting up State Level Mission for skill development to be chaired by the Chief Minister and secondly to consider making available buildings of public educational institutions above the high school level class hours for skill development to any agency including the private sector.