'India may face 5 mn workforce shortage by 2010'

Bangalore, Nov 9: India, witnessing a robust economic growth in the manufacturing and servicing sectors, may face shortage of about five million skilled and employable workforce by 2010, CII IQ Chairman K N Shenoy said.

Addressing newspersons yesterday to announce the holding of three-day 14th Quality Summit here from November 16 to discuss sustainable and inclusive growth through quality and competitiveness, he said India might face employable workforce crisis unless focus was given to imparting quality education both at higher and primary level.

Mr Shenoy said the summit would set the stage for like-minded people from diverse backgrounds to come together to share, identify, understand, motivate and leverage various concepts, approaches and the best practices that could be adopted by educational institutions.

'Quality Education - Availability vs Affordability' would be the theme of the National Summit on Quality in Education, which would have two concurrent sessions, one for schools and another for higher education.

Top leaders from leading manufacturing and service sector organisations, including TCS Managing Director and CEO S Ramadorai, Ford Managing Director and President Aravind Mathew and McKinsey and Company partner Ramesh Mangaleswaran, and experts from the education sector would deliver speeches. Over 800 quality experts, CEOs, academicians, practitioners and business representatives would take part in the summit, he said.

On the occasion, the CII would also announce the winner of the CII-EXIM Bank Award for Business Excellence for 2006.

UNI