Get skilled and earn reward of Rs 10,000 from the government

Finance minister P Chidambaram launches a new scheme to train a million youth in a year with incentive for those who pass National Skill Test. Chetan Chauhan writes.

Updated on: Aug 16, 2013, 23:25:19 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The government on Friday launched is ambitious scheme to train about a million youth every year under the National Skill Certification and Monetary Reward Scheme.

A youth who has been trained by an accredited institution will be required to appear for a national skill test before getting a certificate and reward of Rs 10,000 from the government for getting skilled.

“It is a sort of subsidy for people who are able to get proper skills,” Planning Commission deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia said at the launch of the scheme, called student training and assessment award (Star).

The government estimates to skill a million youth with an annual cost of Rs 1,000 crore. “I want to assure there will be no shortage of funds if more youth gets skills for employment in the industry,” Finance Minister P Chidambaram added.

The scheme will work under age aegis of the National Skill Development Council and 21 sector skill councils. The council has developed national occupational standards for certification of the skills to be provided by training institutes.

All institutions providing training for the state or the Central government will be part of the scheme. The new institutes will have to get themselves accredited with sector skill councils to avail the benefits. The training programmes would be at least 30 days and will include social skills like hygiene, health and communication.

The trained youth will have to appear for skill certification after pay a few of up to Rs 1,000 and Rs 1,500 for shop floor jobs. Once they clear the test they would be eligible for direct transfer of the reward money into their bank accounts. The reward for manufacturing courses is Rs 10,000 and Rs 15,000 and for other courses Rs 7,500 and Rs 10,000.

Rural Development minister Jairam Ramesh announced that an individual of a household which has completed 100 days of work under rural employment guarantee scheme will be sponsored for skill training. Around 8-10% of 4.5 crore households who got job under NREGA would be eligible for the skill training.

The UPA government has launched the national skill development mission in 2008. The scheme was slow to start because of wrangling between the HRD and Labour ministries. Things are set to change with Finance Ministry now in-charge to ensure that target to provide skills are met.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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