The Automotive Skills Development Council (ASDC) on Wednesday signed an initial agreement with a private car aggregator and a private social enterprise firm to help the former train women drivers as part of women empowerment in India.
ASDC is Sector Skill Council, promoted by the auto industry, approved by the government and funded by the National Skill Development Corporation and the ministry of heavy industry.
As per the agreement, Ola Cabs, Empower Pragati and ASDC will identify women from various sections of society and train them to become efficient drivers.
Under the initiative, while ASDC will bring in standardised curriculum and certification norms, Empower Pragati will help with mobilising, designing content, execution of the training on-ground and in counselling and hand-holding.
The car aggregator will help create opportunities for the trainees including financing propositions.
"The programme will focus on supporting entrepreneurship, workforce skill development training and computer literacy giving women driver partners, access to a government recognized ASDC certificate", Ola Cabs said in a statement.
As per the car aggregator, the joint project will also work towards building a framework to enable a safe working environment in the industry since this is a "first of its kind initiative".
Initially rolled out in the Delhi National Capital Region, it will soon be implemented in Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune.
"Overall there is a big skills gap across the automotive value chain and driving skills are in critical shortage with the associated safety challenge.
"We have an ambitious target to train more than fifteen million youth by 2025. Drivers would account for a large chunk out of these numbers and we are confident that many of these would be women candidates," CEO of ASDC Sunil K. Chaturvedi said.
-- Indo-Asian News Service
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