CHENNAI: The Confederation of Indian Industry will submit a detailed proposal for setting up a vocational school at Sriperumbudur for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe youth.

The decision was taken after a meeting CII Tamil Nadu State Council chairman Gopal Srinivasan had with P.A. Ramiah, Secretary, Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare, here on Friday.

It was also agreed that CII would be involved in training SC/ST youth in contact centre skills, retail management and industrial housekeeping. Soft skills training would be conducted for SC students in government hostels.

All these are in tune with CII's Southern Region theme for 2006-07: `competitiveness through innovative, inclusive and sustainable growth.' The emphasis will be on inclusive and sustainable growth with a focus on large-scale employment generation through skills development.

Task force

Led by J. J. Irani, the CII Task Force on Affirmative Action has taken several measures to support SC/ST candidates across the country in enhancing their skills for employment. In Tamil Nadu, 978 out of the 1,855 beneficiaries of various skills development programmes belong to these communities. The organisation is also working closely with the Bhartiya Yuva Shakti Trust to help young entrepreneurs.

As part of this initiative, the CII has vowed to make 5,000 youth belonging to weaker sections employable by 2007-08. In Tamil Nadu, it has commissioned ICRA to conduct a skills mapping study and made a set of recommendations to the Government on bridging the skills gap. To implement the findings of this report, the State has launched a Human Resources Skills Development Initiative, aimed at imparting training skills for unskilled and semi-skilled in key industry sectors. Cluster-based skill development centres may be opened in eight sectors such as automotive, textiles and apparels and IT and ITES, utilising engineering colleges, polytechnics and industrial training institutes. To begin with, the organisation has identified Sriperumbudur and Irungatukottai to start skill development training in the electronics, automobile, apparel and process industry.

ITI upgrade

The CII has also been working towards upgrading ITIs in Tamil Nadu. It has constituted Institute Management Committees and recognised nine ITI s as centres of excellence. A similar programme of industry-institute collaboration could also be taken up in government polytechnics.

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