State of Employment : In Haryana, a struggle to keep its skilling the youth idea on course

When The Indian Express visited one such coaching centre housed in a small building on the outskirts of Ladwatown (Kurukshetra district), 26-year-old Suraj Kumar was seen explaining a group of nearly three dozen youths in a class how they can earn by repairing LED bulbs or tubelights. Holding a couple of parts of a bulb, he demonstrated how they can be reassembled. “Once you understand the science of it and learn the skill, you can be self-employed, open your own shop, or even join a company,” Suraj told the students. He also explained to students how how they can get a loan – ranging from Rs 20,000 to Rs 10 lakh – to start a venture.

When The Indian Express spoke to a few students, it found the course is not inspiring confidence among them to launch even a micro business, with most of them still looking for a government job or an opportunity to move abroad.

A few of them said they can repair or fix an LED bulb fault at their home. One of them, Tushar Dhiman (21) from village Baroundi (Kurukshetra), said he has started earning roughly Rs 5,000 monthly by repairing LED bulbs at home. “I can repair four bulbs in an hour. The villagers approach me as word has already spread in the village that I can fix any problem in bulbs,” says Dhiman, son of a carpenter. He used to repair mobile phones earlier, but left that work to pursue BCom.

At the basement of the building, another class was going on to teach installation of solar energy panels. The trainees did not know how they could utilise this course for their livelihood.

Five out of 14 in the class expressed their willingness to move abroad. One of the trainees, Neetu Saini (28), has already cleared the Pearson Test of English (PTE) after graduation and is keen to move to Australia while her brother is already settled in England. Even those who have family shops like cosmetics and DJ music in their respective villages did not seem keen to pursue their family business.

Ten out of 300 students from the Ladwa centre have already moved abroad during the ongoing course.

Beauty therapy (to become beauty therapist), plumbing (to become plumber), making and repairing electrical system (to take up electrician job), data entry skills (for data entry operator job), solar energy panel installation, tailoring (to become tailor), computer repair and mobile repair are among the courses offered at the skill training centre.

The short-term training programme is meant for those boys and girls who cannot afford costly and long-duration education in engineering colleges and Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs).

Sanjna Kalyan, a project manager at the Mission, says, “We ask the service providers (coaching centres) to give preference to school/college dropouts and those who have an annual income of less than Rs 1.8 lakh.”
Suraj Kumar suggests practical training of the trainees for the course to produce the desired result. Speaking to The Indian Express, Suraj Kumar said, “Those wishing to work as employees in factories or companies should be given a chance to work there as an intern or to do apprenticeship for at least a week every month during the training course to gain first-hand experience in a particular trade. After my diploma at an ITI, I was given a chance to do apprenticeship (for a year) at the Uttar Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam Limited (UHBVNL) – a state government undertaking – where I was also given a monthly wage of Rs 7,825.”

Suraj Kumar added: “For those interested in business should be taken to a micro business establishment or a shop to know how they can launch their venture from scratch.” Shri Vishwakarma Kaushal Vishwavidyalaya Vice-Chancellor (V-C) Raj Nehru told The Indian Express: “This is only a suggestion. They (skill coaching centres) should follow the model of Shri Vishwakarma Kaushal Vishwavidyalaya – ‘earn while learning’ – which gives an opportunity to the students to attend the classes in the university for six months and work at the industry partners of the university for the next six months.”

According to the V-C, these trainees earn a monthly allowance ranging from Rs 8,000 to Rs 30,000 for their work at the industries.

Raj Nehru further said that there are nearly 2,500 students on the university campus in Palwal (Haryana) to learn different skills. The university has chosen courses for sectors like manufacturing, automobiles, information technology, healthcare, artificial intelligence, robotics, banking, finance, and hospitality management which are in high demand.

Meanwhile, trainers at the Ladwa institute complained they are not getting their monthly wages (of Rs 10,000) timely. These trainers are diploma holders from ITIs. One of them on condition of anonymity said, “We have still not been paid for the training period of one and a half months”.

Head of another coaching centre said that the service providers across the state have been facing problems in giving salaries to their staff because they have not been provided funds by the government yet even as the course was nearing completion.

When contacted, an official of the Mission requesting anonymity said the funds could not be released because an exercise of revamping of the body at the district level is currently underway.

Under the Haryana Skill Development Mission set up in 2015, the government claims that more than 80,000 youths had been provided skills to make them self-reliant.

When asked about the delay in release of payment to the service providers, Vivek Aggarwal, Mission Director of Haryana Skill Development Mission, said, “We had noticed some shortcomings at the end of the service providers and so, we have initiated a process to verify their documents if they were following the norms. It caused a delay in the payments. But now we have completed the verification and the process of payments has begun.”

Sources said the process of verification was launched after the Anti-Corruption Bureau (earlier State Vigilance Bureau) had initiated an inquiry against a senior officer earlier posted at the Mission. The allegations pertained to taking bribes in lieu of clearing payments of the service providers, the sources added. On the issue of lack of practical training, Vivek Aggarwal said they have proposed to tie up with some well-known companies “to train our trainees at their training centres” which will solve this issue. This year, as many as 140 skilling centres were allotted for nearly 13,000 youths.

“These days plumbers, electricians, data entry operators, computer and mobile repair technicians are in great demand. To ensure immediate employment to the youths, we offer them training and a certificate too. From next month, we will start a new programme to offer training to operate drones which has a lot of job opportunities in agriculture, military and photography. The basic conventional training is already being provided from the ITIs, especially to those who are unable to go to engineering colleges. We try to bridge the gap between ITI courses and the demand of the industries by offering them skills keeping pace with the technological advancement,” the Mission director added.

A few weeks ago, Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar had announced that the state government will organise 200 job fairs this year.

Khattar also said, “Since January 2019 till now, 1,450 job fairs had been organised in the state and employment assistance had been provided to 31,217 youths. Apart from this, appointment letters for jobs were also handed over to the youths at these fairs.”