Govt seeks funds from ADB for skill development courses

Ambika Sharma

Tribune News Service

Solan, March 30

The state government was mulling a proposal to draw funding from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for its various skill development programmes aimed at providing employment to the educated youth in the state.

The Planning Department was finalising proposals after seeking suggestions from various departments, including Technical Education, Rural Development, Urban Development, Higher Education and Labour and Employment.

As per the initial proposal, Rs 57 crore were being sought for the Labour and Employment Department whereby the existing Employment Exchanges would be converted into modern career counselling centres.

This would facilitate provision of jobs to the educated youth and help in bringing down the number of unemployed youth, confided sources.

Another proposal pertaining to the Technical Education Department involved financial assistance to the tune of Rs 472 crore.

As per the initial proposal, this fund would be utilised to set up new trades in the 26 Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) which were much in demand, but trained youth were not available.

Apart from this as many as 10 state-of-the-art ITIs would be set up where modern technical training facilities would be created and about 10-12 community colleges would also be established across the state.

Proposal to explore the opening of new polytechnic institutes would also be explored where various skill development courses would be introduced.

Since the state government endeavoured to provide skill development training to 1 lakh youth in a span of five years, the loan once approved would help the government in achieving this objective.

GS Bali, Minister for Technical Education, while terming skill development as the government’s major initiative towards providing jobs to the youth, said they were working towards making technical education more meaningful and one which could fetch ready jobs for unemployed educated youth of the state.

Sources said the officials of the ADB had already held preliminary talks with the state government and the Planning Department was now finalising the proposal to seek adequate funding for its various skill development courses.

With nearly 8 lakh unemployed youth being registered in various employment exchanges of the state, the provision of jobs through skill development was the major focus of the state government and it had already introduced a two-year skill development allowance for the unemployed youth.