Industry reponds to PM's call on affirmative actions for SC/ST

New Delhi, Apr 1 (UNI) The delivery models in the areas of employment, entrepreneurial development, employability and education have performed better than the set targets in the first year according to a report by an industry body.

The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) today reported the progress made by CII members on the 'Affirmative Action work in the last one year.

''CII's Concrete Steps on Affirmative Action, as were announced in 2006 set out very clear areas of intervention by Indian Industry in the four areas of Entrepreneurship Development, Employability Creation, Education and Workplace interventions (Employment) and in the first year of work (2007),''said Chairman - Council for Affirmative Action (CII) Dr Jamshed J Irani.

CII has focused on the creation of delivery models in each of these areas, which can be scaled up in the future and can be replicated, he added.

The Code of Conduct on Affirmative Action created by the industry body has already been adopted by 579 of CII's member companies, he added.

Reporting progress on the area of employability creation, Dr Irani said that CII has so far trained 22580 candidates from the SC/ ST communities, for making them more employable.

''In the last one year, CII member companies have partnered many educational institutions, NGOs, technical colleges, etc across the country to run a number of courses, which aim at imparting soft skills, vocational training and skills development, etc to make a large number of candidates employable. Many of the candidates, who have undergone training under these programmes have been absorbed by CII member companies themselves, and therefore, are a testament to the quality of the courses that have been run,'' Dr Irani said.

In the area of Entrepreneurship Development, Dr Irani said that CII's thrust has been to create income streams for people, who have entrepreneurial talent so that they can create employment in turn.

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