Independent body to regulate vocational education sector

The government has decided to establish an independent body to regulate and lay down guidelines for developing vocational education in the country. This is expected to end a tussle between the Ministries of Labour and Human Resource Development over control of the government’s plan to impart training to 500 million people on key disciplines, including in auto and textiles.

The National Skill Development Authority (NSDA) is likely to be headed by either the Prime Minister’s skills adviser and Tata Consultancy Services Ltd’s Vice-Chairman S. Ramadorai or Planning Commission member Narendra Jhadav, according to government officials who declined to be named.

NSDA will prepare a national skills qualification framework instead of a vocational qualification framework as was suggested by the labour ministry or a national vocational education qualification framework as was proposed by the MHRD. “This has been decided by the central government a few days back. We don’t have any issue with MHRD (now) and the new framework will take care of the skills education sector in the country,” said labour secretary Mrutyunjay Sarangi.

A row broke out between the ministries of labour and HRD over the latter’s attempt to lay down a framework for vocational education. The labour ministry, the nodal agency for vocational education, strongly opposed the HRD ministry’s interference, Mint reported on 14October. The MHRD said the labour ministry had failed to meet the rising need for skilled manpower, creating a need for it to step in and integrate skills training with mainstream education.

The Ministry of Labour has a mandate to create a pool of 100 million skilled workers by 2022, as part of an overall target of training 500 million workers. The Ministry of Labour supervises more than 9,000 industrial training institutes (ITIs) and industrial training centres, where at least 1.2 million students are enrolled.

A MHRD ministry official, requesting anonymity, said the ministry recently had meetings with the labour ministry to iron out differences. Sharda Prasad, Director General at the Directorate General of Employment and Training (DGET), confirmed the development. “I had two rounds of meeting with higher education secretary and other officials. Few days back, secretaries of several ministries had a meeting on the issue,” Prasad said, adding that both the ministries will collaborate for the national mission. DGET functions under the labour ministry.

“It’s a positive development that the issue has been resolved. This will pave way for training more people in the country,” said Dillip Chenoy, managing director of National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), a public-private partnership between the government and industry lobby groups. NSDC has a mandate to provide vocational training to 150 million people by 2022.

Meanwhile, the European Union and India on Wednesday launched a project on skill development that will support development of the national skills qualification framework in some segments, including the automotive sector, with a focus on manufacturing and maintenance. It will receive an assistance of €6 million from the EU. Joao Cravinho, the EU’s envoy to India, said that in a decade the South Asian nation will have a surplus of 56 million workforce as against a shortage of 47 million in Western countries. This project will cater to the global market and help mobility of labour force “for the ever-changing employment market”, he said.

Source: Mint, May 24, 2012