The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Need to improve skills of workers, students stressed

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Wednesday, Dec 12, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Need to improve skills of workers, students stressed

Special Correspondent

Regional World Skills Competition begins to pick team for the national level

— Photo: A.Muralitharan

FOR UPGRADING SKILLS: K.N.Krishnamurthy, Project Head, CII Tsunami Rehabilitation Project, addressing the inaugural function of CII’s Regional World Skills Competition at SRM University, Kattankulathur, on Tuesday.

TAMBARAM: The Confederation of Indian Industry’s Regional World Skills Competition began on Tuesday with speakers highlighting the need to improve the skills of workers employed in industries and students in technical institutions.

The inaugural function was held in SRM University, Kattankulathur. At the end of the four-day programme, a team would be selected that would compete in the national event to be held later. The winners would compete at the world-level Skills Competition to be held in Canada next year.

The competition is organised once in two years with participants from all over the world competing in various technical events to demonstrate their skills and expertise.

India competed for the first time at the world meet in Japan last year. Of the 47 countries that took part, India finished 44th, said K.N. Krishnamurthy, Project Head, CII Tsunami Rehabilitation Project.

He said there was a lot of talent and potential among the Indian workforce to excel at the world level, but their skills had to be fine tuned. And it had to start from the training institutes, he added. Pointing out that about 65,000 engineering students graduated each year in Tamil Nadu, Mr. Krishnamurthy said only 15 per cent of them were employable.

While acknowledging the contribution of Information Technology, he said greater growth and progress could be achieved only through development in manufacturing and heavy engineering sectors.

Speaking on the occasion, K. Kathirvelu, Deputy Director, Planning, Commissionerate of Employment and Training, Government of Tamil Nadu, cited surveys by the CII that predicted the requirement of qualified youths in Tamil Nadu to be between 9 and 15 million.

The requirement was to fill up the growing job requirements in the coming decade or fifteen years.

This vast number was required in seven thrust areas alone: Information Technology, IT Enabled Services, Financial Services, Construction, Textiles, Leather and Light Engineering.

In order to train qualified youth from Tamil Nadu, the government had initiated a series of measures, most important of them being improving standards in all the government-run Industrial Technical Institutes that included participation from the private sector, Mr. Kathirvelu added.

SRM University chancellor T.R.Pachamuthu and pro vice-chancellor (planning and development) T.P. Ganesan spoke.

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