India CSR News Network
NEW DELHI: FICCI, leading industry chamber, has demanded special incentives from the Government to help it invest 2% of corporate social responsibility (CSR) fund towards skill development of youths, the potential workforce for the country.
“An active role of industry is key to improve aspirational value of skill training programmes in India. Upgrading existing skillsets of teachers also needs to be formally undertaken. Special incentive can be provided to the industry by the Government in order to invest their 2% CSR funds towards skilling initiative in order to ensure adequate capitalization.”, FICCI said.
A report on re-engineering the skill ecosysytem, prepared by KMPG in association with FICCI was released on September 15, 2016 at the global skills summit 2016 organised by the FICCI in New Delhi.
The biggest problem before Skill India is the accuracy and reliability of data. The multiplicity of sources must be brought together if a coherent and comprehensive labor market information system is to be established, and this calls for a common information system as an essential component of the LMIS. EPFO, ESIC and other official statistics on government employees provide critical data on formal employment to identify industries to be prioritised for skill development. Skill gap studies for these growing sectors can provide additional information regarding skilling needs at an aggregate level.
The paper also highlights the phenomenon of employment clusters. States such as Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Delhi together provided employment to 57 per cent of the nation’s formal workforce in 2014-15. This fact clearly indicates the high concentration of formal employment in some states. Skill development in these States should be based on the industries cluster present Industries should be incentivized to set establishments in labour incentive states to arrest internal migration and skill development in these states be planned accordingly.
As per the current forecast by the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE), there would be an incremental requirement of skilling 110 million additional workers by 2022 and to achieve this and reskill the existing workforce the ministry has embarked on a herculean task of skilling 400 million workforce by 2022.
The white paper touches upon strategic changes to re-engineer the ecosystem that can facilitate the transformation:
Policy-level actions – Developing skill development plans based on state level analysis of the major industries driving economic growth and rising formal employment opportunities by state and central governments is essential. With future growth coming from formal employment, an intensive Recognition of Prior learning exercise to certify available skills as per the National Skills Qualification Framework level also becomes vital.
Quality enhancement actions – An active role of industry is key to improve aspirational value of skill training programmes in India. Upgrading existing skillsets of teachers also needs to be formally undertaken. Special incentive can be provided to the industry by the Government in order to invest their 2% CSR funds towards skilling initiative in order to ensure adequate capitalization.
Improving the Working Population Ratio of females through women-centric component in Skill State Plans and annually monitoring and recognizing high performing states could be a positive step in this direction. Establishing and growing more skill universities is also one of the key suggestions.
