15 mn new jobs by 2015: CII

Chennai, Mar 21: The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has urged the Tamil Nadu government to create a Skill Development Fund (SDF) of Rs 600 to 700 crore to cater to the growing manpower needs of the state.

The state would have to offer 13 to 15 million new (incremental) jobs, including about four million skilled and highly skilled professionals, and nine to 11 million unskilled manpower, by 2015.

These requirments primarily arise from automotive, IT and ITES, textiles, leather, light engineering, construction, and financial services sectors, according to the state-level skill Mapping Study conducted by CII.

The study was done to estimate the manpower requirements of Tamil Nadu's high-growth industries till 2015 and to map the skills currently available in the state.

It estimated that the additional educational infrastructure capable of training 80,000 students a year will have to be built in Tamil Nadu with public private partnership over the next decade to cater to the growing manufacturing and service sector of needs the state.

Such infrastructure includes engineering, arts, science and commerce colleges as well as polytechnics and ITIs.

To impart basic training to unskilled labour (primarily agricultural workforce) and enable them take up jobs in the State's industrial and service sectors, the Study urged the government to conceptualise and roll-out a Grassroot Level Skill Development Initiative (GlSDI), a large-scale skill-development initiative, covering around 0.8 million unskilled people annually.

The Government should conceptualise the formulation of curriculum for GLSDI by 2007; conduct trial runs in select districts by 2008, and roll-out the programme by 2009, it added.

UNI