Vocational training aids skill development: Sibal

New Delhi, Sep 23: Speaking at the 3rd CII Global Summit on Skills Development here, Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal said that by introducing vocational training between Class 8 and 12 will help them to deal with skill shortage.

Sibal said that a large number of students wanted to acquire ordinary skills that would enable them to lead ordinary lives. We should help them to do this.

The Centre is committed to setting up 50 new Central Universities, 1600 new ITIs, 10,000 vocational institutes. A Critical Mass of highly skilled people is needed to fuel growth and guarantee wealth.

Sibal emphasized that the country was actively looking at partnerships from countries such as Germany which had very good vocational training institutes.

He said that institutes abroad could be very effectively set up branches in India or go in for 'twinning' as a model.

A marine institute from Norway is soon going to start an Indian branch. This will help them meet their skills shortage and skill Indian youth. This was one example of a win-win situation.

Arun Maira, Member, Planning Commission recounted how Germany had helped train Indian automobile engineers at the time of Independence and thus provided a much needed impetus for the Indian automobile industry.

These trained Indian specialists then went on to train Singaporeans. This he said was the kind of collaboration that was urgently needed in the present time, he said.

OneIndia News