Maharashtra industries minister Subhash Desai on Sunday urged education institutions giving engineering training to focus on skill development. He said that today’s employers want to employ persons who will be of utility to their industry and won’t hire anybody simply because the person has a degree. The Maharashtra government was concerned about the state of the affairs and concentrated its efforts on skill development, the minister said.
Speaking at the at the 45th annual national convention and international conference of Indian Society for Technical Education held in Amravati, Mr Desai said that Maharashtra has bagged 35 per cent of the total FDI in the country, but merely attracting investors is not enough. “The industries are demanding skilled manpower. They can’t recruit mere degree holders. And here, everything makes a difference,” he said.
“Around 10 lakh graduates pass out every year and look for jobs. They apply but get no reply. Only 20 per cent of them find jobs. The others keep struggling. This is happening because we haven’t revamped even the basic courses taught at our ITIs over the last 50 years,” the minister said while calling for reshaping of education that is being imparted at these institutions.
To overcome this problem, the state invited industry captains from the world to impart skill training to the ITI students and signed an MoU with Bosch so that the workforce became employable, the minister added.
Regarding the textile industry, Mr Desai said that the state government is introducing a new policy, as textile is an important sector. “Earlier, the textile industry was focused in non-cotton growing regions, but now we have decided to set up this industry in only cotton-growing regions and 10 textile parks are coming up in the Vidarbha, Marathwada and north Maharashtra regions ,” he said.
Mr Desai further added that the first of the proposed 10 textile parks was coming up in Nandgaonpeth near Amravati, which was being developed as a model township for textile. According to the minister, nine big textile houses like NTC, Siyaram, Shyam Indofab and Raymonds were setting huge units here with a collective investment of over Rs15,000 crore, thus creating job opportunities for more than 10,000 locals.
