SHILLONG: Almost 50 per cent of the funds released for the Industrial Training Institutes (ITI) in Meghalaya remained unutilized and the story is similar in the other Northeastern states which have also failed to make use of the financial aid.
This was informed by the Joint Secretary and Director General of Ministry of Labour and Employment, S Agarwal during a meeting on Skill Development held at the North Eastern Council Secretariat on Monday.
Agarwal highlighted the substantial increase in funds available for upgrading the existing ITIs and also establishing new ITIs in the States but the same has not been utilized optimally by the respective North Eastern states.
According to the senior official, almost 80 per cent of the funds sanctioned for the ITIs have not been utilized in Nagaland. The figure is 60 per cent in Assam, 42 per cent in Mizoram, 70 per cent in Arunachal Pradesh and 66 per cent in Tripura.
The meeting on skill development, which was attended by representatives from Ministry of Rural Development, National Skill Development Corporation, Ministry of DoNER and State Secretaries among others, was called at the back drop of incidents of high literacy rate not leading to employable qualification besides high incidences of dropout rate and unemployment rates comparatively higher than the national average.
Detailed discussions were held on the revised guidelines on Skill Development Intensive Schemes (SDIS) of the Ministry of Labour and Employment. The scheme is to be implemented through the State Government whereby 100 per cent funding will be shelled out by the Centre for training cost of youths in different trades both in situ and outside the North East by any entity, public or private with placement rate of 75 per cent and salary of not less than Rs. 7000.
Since the programme has to be implemented through the State Governments, Agarwal urged the Government representatives to come up with specific proposals and Job Melas within the next 2-3 months to provide a platform to the un-employed youths who join Skill Development Programmes and various VTPs.
Under this programme, the youths can identify courses and the institutions where they want to take the training. The participants were also informed that funds for Skill Development under NRLM has increased to 25 per cent and the National Urban Livelihood Mission has also been approved. Besides this, the Aajeevika Scheme of the Ministry of Rural Development and the National Skill Development Corporation which is a public private partnership agency created by the Ministry of Finance were also discussed.