TeamLease Skill University, Labour Ministry sign MoU to expand apparenticeships in India

TeamLease Skill University, a Public Private Partnership with Gujarat government, announces a partnership with the Ministry of Labour & Employment to substantially expand the number of apprenticeships in the country.

Under the MoU, TeamLease Skill University 'National Employability through Apprentice Program' (NETAP) will assist the government in reaching out to 20,000 new employers and appoint more than 5,00,000 apprentices over the next three years.

Rituparna Chakraborty, Co-Founder, TeamLease, Head - NETAP said, "India's job and skill emergency need creative solutions at scale. It has been long known that the learning-by-doing and learning-while-earning aspects of apprenticeships are powerful vehicles for skill development. This partnership creates new connections between education, employability and employment and takes us closer to NETAP's ambition to be the world's largest apprenticeship program by 2020."

India's apprenticeship regime has under-performed, the press statement said that we have only 300,000 apprentices while Germany has 3 million, Japan has 10 million and China has 20 million.

If we had the same proportion of our labour force in apprenticeships as Germany we would have 15 million apprentices. This MOU not only aims to increase the number of employers engaging the apprentices but also to create new linkages with higher education.

All NETAP trainees receive 200 hours access to a cloud campus English, Soft Skills and Basic computers and in the future will receive academic credit for lateral entry into certificate, diploma and degree programs.

Alok Kumar, Director General of Employment & Training (DGET), Ministry of Labour and Employment said that expanding apprenticeship is a high policy priority and the recent legislative amendments to the Act enable us to innovate and accelerate execution on ground.

NETAP offers opportunities across 26 high growth functions/industries for durations between three and twenty four months and trainee stipends at least equal the unskilled minimum wage.

This MoU brings increased opportunities to a wide umbrella of diploma holders, vocation education or vocational training certificate holders (ITI) and standard VIII pass outs in accordance with the Apprentices Act, 1961.

NETAP will also work with State government to form state apprenticeship corporations that will create state level matching infrastructure for specific geographies or sectors.

It not only enables employers to use NETAP to comply with their obligations under the Apprenticeship Act but also substantially expand the opportunities for students across the country.