 "Labourers works at the construction site of a residential building in Mumbai. Photo: Reuters")
To protect thousands of job seekers from exploitation in the booming construction sector in the Gulf countries, Uttar Pradesh government is gearing up to route them through an institutional framework.
UP is among the few Indian states that has already procured an Overseas Manpower Recruitment License to facilitate skilled manpower get offshore jobs, especially in the Gulf.
UP Skill Development Mission (UPSDM) Director Surendra Singh said a large number of people from UP and Kerala migrated to the Gulf for employment in the construction sector.
"We want to send them through an institutional framework to stop harassment in these countries," he said, adding a state team had already visited Dubai to facilitate placement of skilled manpower getting trained in the state under the Mission.
The Mission has tied up with the UP Non Resident Indian (NRI) department for the purpose, he informed.
Singh was addressing UP Skill Summit 2016 here organised here by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in association with National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) and UPSDM.
Singh said the government was taking steps to add value and dignity to job skills and vocations run by the Mission, since these were basically blue collar jobs.
He informed it would be now mandatory for different skill development programmes in India to strictly comply with NSDC norms.
Meanwhile, UP skills, development and vocation education secretary Bhuvnesh Kumar said the state had added 70,000 more seats at industrial training institutes (ITI) and adopted Simulation Technique to impart practical training skills to students. The state government is also planning to set up a Skill University.
NSDC Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Jayant Krishna said UP must lay a renewed focus on agro-processing and manufacturing sectors.
He mentioned that UP had traditional clusters all over the state, which could be leveraged for economic development and skill development for creating jobs. He referred to carpet weaving at Bhadohi, leather industry at Kanpur and Agra, brassware at Moradabad, silk weaving at Varanasi, chikankari at Lucknow, glasswork at Firozabad, lock making at Aligarh, sports goods at Meerut etc.
"With focus on revitalising skill development in these clusters, designing, productivity and marketing would improve substantially," he noted.
National Skill Development Policy was launched in 2009 with the aim of 'skilling' 500 million by 2022.
