The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) will need skilled manpower of 300,000 for making the Aadhaar project a success, a top company official has said. To meet this skilled manpower shortage, the authority has signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Skill Development Corporation to create a pool of trained workers for enrollment agencies of Aadhaar.
“To make the Aadhar project a success, you need skilled man power. For the ultimate rollout, we need 50,000 machine and it needs nearly 200,000 operators. Along with that we have to create a strong pool of 300,000 as there would be drop outs and we have to support the back end operations also. We have signed an agreement with NSDC regarding training of these people from our enrollment agencies,” said R S Sharma, director general of the authority. UIDAI would use NSDC trained workers for jobs like handling technologies and for other back-end operations of the authority.
“NSDC, through its partners can help empaneled agencies of UIDAI to address this challenge by developing a pool of adequately skilled and certified manpower at local level across the country,” the agreement said.
The authority, headed by former Infosys Technologies co-chairman Nandan Nilekani, is responsible for implementing Aadhaar identity cards for about 600 million people by 2014. UIDAI started enrollment in September 2010 in the tribal village of Tembhli in Maharashtra.
A registrar of the authority conducts it through empaneled enrollment agencies.
Sharma said that UIDAI would issue Aadhaar cards to about 15 to 20 crore people this financial year and has issued 8.5 million cards till now.
The authority has about 300 permanent staff. “In an effort to cover every body under the programme, we have conducted camps for marginalised sections like poor, homeless and blind in some areas,” he said.
However, the manpower need is expected to decrease after some years. “Since, we are in the earlier stages of the programme, need for manpower shortage is high.
After sometimes, there will be machines at selected areas only,” Sharma said.
