New Delhi: A year after taking charge of world’s largest democracy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi in July 2015 had launched the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) – one among several skill development programmes to address the issue of unemployment in the country.
The programme that aimed at imparting training to around 1 crore youth in four years realised its goal of providing short term training to 40.27 lakh candidates till January 2020. However, not even 50 per cent of the trained candidates could get jobs during the four years which asserts that mere launching of skill development programmes is not enough to provide employment to the youths.
According to the government data, around 73.47 lakh candidates were trained and given orientation under Short Term Training (STT) courses and Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) across the country in four years i,e. 2016-2020 under PMKVY. As many as 40.27 lakh candidates were imparted STT and 33.20 lakh were given RPL till January 2020.
Out of the candidates imparted STT, only 16.6 lakh, less than half of the total, could get placement between 2016 and January 2020.
Similarly, out of 1.2 lakh candidates imparted STT under PMKVY in Odisha, only 49,130 got placement in four years.
The PMKVY aims at training a minimum of 300 million skilled people by 2022 in order to address the issue of unemployment.
Some unaddressed issues
Apart from the launch of skill development programmes, the government needs to look after other factors such as working environment and remuneration system. According to Subroto Bagchi, the head of Odisha Skill Development Authority (OSDA), candidates often avoid to migrate to other states for jobs after getting trained due to accommodation issues. He said there is no worker housing provision in the country. As they do not get enough payment, it becomes difficult for candidates to bear accommodation and other expenses in other cities.
Another issue Bagchi highlighted is the contractual system where a company does not employ a person directly. He said that 90 per cent of the people who get employed in the country after being trained by the government are not employed by the employer directly. Companies often hire employees through a contractor and the payments are made to them by these contractors. Further, the wage is not enough and adequate to survive in big cities.
“A major reason for a relatively lower placement rate of the PMKVY programmes has been non-residential nature of the same which impacts the quality of intake, the commitment of the training institute, a candidate’s seriousness as well as employer interest,” said Rashmita Panda, CEO of OSDA.
How Odisha has fared on the job front
The state had set a target of training 11 lakh candidates under various categories of skill development programmes in the last five years, from 2014 to 2019. The OSDA revealed that as many as 2, 71, 880 candidates were trained and 1,51,492 candidates were provided jobs under placement linked programmes conducted through DDU-GKY, PMKVY, state’s own Placement Linked Training Programme (PLTP) and through institutions like CTTC which comes to around 56 per cent during 2016 to 2020. The authority also said that in addition to this many youths opt for self-employment and up-skilling after completion of their training programmes.
The state government also said that from 2019, a new 5-year plan has been announced and this carries a target of 1.5 million youth.
Kuldeep Singh, OP