Start process to cancel vocational training centres: Technical Education Director

Tribune News Service

Rajmeet Singh

Chandigarh, October 21

A seven-year-old case of irregular payments of Rs 22 crore by the Technical Education Department of Punjab to private vocational training providers (VTP) imparting ‘modular employable skills’ to job-seekers is back in news.

Were registered sans verification

• Vocational training providers were registered without verification of their infrastructure. Also, the beneficiary students’ qualifications were not authenticated
• The payments were made for the training imparted under short-term employable skill courses run between April 2012 and May 2014

Technical Education and Industrial Training Director DPS Kharbanda, in his speaking orders, directed initiation of the process of cancellation of ineligible VTP centres, besides the recovery of the wrongly paid amount to the centres. As per department sources, the procedure should have been cancellation of erring centres, issuance of recovery notice and rejection of pleas of the service providers.

While hearing a petition filed by a service provider, Kharbanda cited a report of the Vigilance Bureau and an audit report of the Auditor General and said an amount of Rs 33.59 lakh that had already been paid to the petitioner in 2013-2014 was to be recovered along with interest.

The Vigilance Bureau had suggested a thorough verification before releasing the pending payments of Rs 18 crore.

Under the Skill Development Initiative Scheme of the Union Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, the state is entrusted with the verification and approval of VTPs before clearing payments from the Centre.

Of the 80,000 admissions made during the two years, at least 36,000 enrolments were done without following the due procedure. The officials reportedly authenticated 60 batches of more than 20 students each in a single day, which would not have been humanly possible if due procedure was followed. During checking of records of 14 VTP centres, the Vigilance Bureau spotted 47 candidates for whom payments had been claimed in multiple courses.

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