AP to have 8 mn new jobs by 2015

The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) envisages that Andhra Pradesh will have 7.5-8 million new jobs to offer by 2015, considering the likely improvements in the state's economic output and labour productivity.

The employment opportunities envisaged are likely to emanate from construction, textiles, IT and ITeS, healthcare, tourism, pharma, biotech, financial services and engineering sectors.

The CII projections are based on a 'Study on Mapping of Human Resources & Skills in Andhra Pradesh- 2015'. The study was jointly conducted by CII and ICRA Management Consulting Services Ltd (IMaCS).

As per the study, the state requires 4.5 million skilled and 3-3.5 million unskilled human resources by 2015. As against this requirement, supply of skilled workforce is estimated to be around 3.4 million. After factoring in the low levels of employability, the available skilled workforce is reduced to 1.3 million.

Andhra Pradesh presently has an established (higher) education infrastructure consisting of about 1,340 arts, science and commerce colleges, 101 polytechnics, 300 engineering colleges and over 550 industrial training institutes. Together, these institutions produced over 300,000 skilled people in 2006.

However, according to the study, over 28 per cent of the engineering graduates and 20 per cent of the diploma-holders that the institutions turn out every year are unemployed.

The primary reason cited for the 'unemployability' of the student are a disconnect between academic curricula and industry requirements resulting in deficiencies in specific functional skills and shortfall in appropriately-trained faculty resulting in inappropriately trained students.

For narrowing the human resources-availability gaps in the state, the CII has suggested the creation of additional educational infrastructure and ushering in skill-building initiatives.

As per its estimates, the annual funding requirements to support these initiatives will be of the order of Rs 650 crore, the bulk of which has to be spent on employability-focused training.

The state government should take a lead role in the skill development initiatives and establish a Skill Development Fund (SDF). The SDF should be raised through innovative ways. The government should fund the initial corpus to support training activities of workers.

The organisations employing these workers should pay the government one month's salary of the worker. "We expect this to cover 50-60 per cent of the total annual funding requirements," the CII said.

According to the organisation, the balance funding could be in the form of budgetary support or through funding from multilateral agencies. The state government should nominate a nodal agency to manage the disbursement of funds that would support various training initiatives.