CII moots skill development fund to meet manpower requirement

Hyderabad, Oct 26 (UNI) The Confederation of Indian Industry today proposed a Rs 650 crore Skill Development Fund (SDF) for meeting Andhra Pradesh's manpower requirement of over 4.5 million by 2015.

Making a presentation on mapping of human resources and skills for Andhra Pradesh, CII Task force on Skills, Employability and Affirmative Action Chairman B Santhanam said the State Government should take the lead in establishing the SDF for providing three levels of training with the involvement of the industry and Non-Governmental Organisations.

Expressing concern over employability of the present workforce, he said even if agriculture grew by four per cent, it had to shed excess people who relied on the sector.

The study, done by ICRA Management Consultancy services, estimated that among other sectors, construction industry would require over 20.10 lakh people, followed by textiles 10.81 lakh and Information Technology(IT) and IT-enabled services 7.41 lakh.

Elaborating on the skill development initiative, he said specialised skills had to be imparted in science, engineering and technology for excellence and innovation, employability focused training programme for semi-skilled workforce and students.

Suggesting that the Government provide the initial corpus fund, he said organisations employing these trained workers would have to pay it an amount equal to a month's salary of the work.

UNI