Opportunities for all at skill contest : Nitish Kumar
2 min readPATNA: Chief minister Nitish Kumar inaugurated the first-ever state-level skill competition — India Skills-Bihar 2018 — at Veterinary College ground here on Friday.
A total of 162 youths from different districts of Bihar are participating in the three-day competition in 27 trading skills. Most of the participants are students from premier institutions such as IIT, BIT, NIT, NIFT, IHM, Tool Room, and CIPET.
Speaking on the occasion, Nitish said youths in Bihar have a big opportunity as several countries as well as states in India are facing shortage of skilled labour. Talking about various schemes under the state government, Nitish said over 3 lakh youths had already received training under the Kushal Yuva Program.
“The state government has a target to impart skills to over 1 crore youths under the Kaushal Vikas Program by 2020. A Rs500 crore venture fund has also been set aside to promote entrepreneurship in the state. Free Wi-Fi will be provided in all government colleges and universities,” he said.
The CM said the state government is to set up engineering, GNM, polytechnic and paramedical colleges along with ITIs (Industrial Training Institutes) for women in all 38 districts. Plans are afoot to set up ANM colleges and ITIs in all subdivisions.
Deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi (SuMo) said 18 new ITIs have been set up apart from nine new women ITIs. He said Bihar has probably the highest working population among all states in the country with more than 50% of population between 15-65 years age group.
Three memoranda of understanding (MoU) were also signed on the occasion. The first was between Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Bangalore and state minority welfare department, the second was between Women’s ITI Digha and Javed Habib, and the third was between Women’s ITI Digha and Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDI), Ahmedabad.
With regard to the skill competition, two state-level winners, who upon succeeding in regional as well as national level competitions, are likely to represent the country in ‘World Skills Competition’ to be held in Kazan, Russia in 2019.
“State winner and runner-up will receive a cash prize of Rs21,000 and Rs11,000 respectively, while all other contestants will receive a cash prize of Rs5,000. Those contestants from Bihar who qualify at the regional and national level will also be awarded Rs51,000 and Rs1 lakh respectively by the state government,” state labour resources minister Vijay Kumar Sinha said.
The awards will be presented by Bihar governor Satya Pal Malik during the concluding ceremony on April 22.
Courtesy: TNN
