Apprenticeship law needs to be changed : Sudha Pillai

The latest amendments proposed in the Apprenticeship Act of 1961 which will soon go for consideration in Parliament will not go far in encouraging the industry take up apprentices. Fresh inputs are required in them before they go to Parliament. This was stated by Member Secretary, Planning Commission, Sudha Pillai, at the 2nd National Conference on Skill Development organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in collaboration with the Ministry of Labour and Employment in New Delhi today. Speaking on the occasion, the India Director of International Labour Organisation (ILO), Tine Staermose, called upon CII and other industry organizations to come up with newer financial models of training workers which gave greater role to industry. She said ILO was ready to work with industry on framing such models and acknowledged the role played by CII in preparing the framework of the national skills mission. Lamenting the fact that technical personnel were always given less than their due in an organization, Ms Pillai exhorted industry to correct the current bias in favour of management graduates. She said those with B.Tech and M.Tech degrees were paid less than MBAs which was the reason behind engineers rushing for business management degrees and switching over to managerial jobs. She also sought to allay the misgivings of industry vis a vis trade unions. Instead of viewing them from a negative perspective, she said, they needed to be co-opted in the skill development movement since they were the ones who were in direct contact with workers on the shopfloor and it was constant upgradation of their skills which was the need of the hour. Chairman of CII Council on Skill Development and Executive Director & CFO of Tata Consultancy Services S Mahalingam said CII had three major initiatives on skills which included affirmative action, skill development and governance. It was also working aggressively in the area of providing international exposure to skilled youth in specialised areas such as mechatronics, ploymechanics, CNC turning and mould making. The chamber has shortlisted six of the 16 Indian competitors who are going to take part in the WorldSkills Competition taking place in London from October 5 to 8. WorldSkills London is the world’s largest skills competition where young people from across the globe compete in different trades. The 16 participants from India will be competing in 15 trades including confectionery, cooking, jewellery, beauty therapy, fashion technology, plumbing and car painting. The day-long CII conference focused on sustainability of skill training and scaling up the skill development initiatives to fulfill the Prime Minister’s mission of skilling 500 million youth by 2022. It provided a platform for private and public sector players, policy makers, researchers, skill training providers and development specialists from across the country to share best practices and exchange information and strengthen the vocational training sector in the country. Speakers at the conference included Sharda Prasad–Director-General of Employment and Training; Jayashree Mukherjee–joint secretary, ministry of development of north east region; Santosh Misra—member-secretary, Tamil Nadu Skills Development Mission and Jayant Krishna—Office of the Advisor to Prime Minister, National Council on Skill Development.