Jammu & Kashmir
60,000 JK youth to get training, placement under GoI scheme: Admin
RDD to identify 20 highly educated youth in each Panchayat across JK
Jammu: Chief Secretary of the Jammu and Kashmir administration, Arun Kumar Mehta has directed the Rural Development department to ensure training and placement of 60,000 unemployed youth under HIMAYAT during the next fiscal year.
The programme aims to train youth with placement assurance of trained youth. The Programme is 100 percent funded by the Government of India.
Mehta asked RDD to identify 20 highly educated youth in each Panchayat. The assistance of DDCs and PRIs may be taken.
He said the training and consequent job placement of 60,000 youth under HIMAYAT and other self-employment initiatives launched by the administration will help the administration’s objective of driving down the unemployment in JK to below 5%.
Mehta made this observation while reviewing the HIMAYAT scheme in a meeting attended by Administrative Secretary, RDD, and COO, HIMAYAT.
The Chief Secretary said as the Scheme will close on March 31, 2023, the department should target short-term skill-based courses spanning 3- 9 months.
Earlier, Commissioner Secretary, RDD, Mandeep Kour in her presentation informed that around 19,000 youth have been trained while around 4,000 youth have been given job placements up until now since the inception of the Scheme.
She said most of the trainees have received training in sectors/areas like healthcare, IT-TES, retail, telecom, tourism, and hospitality. While emphasizing that there is also a need to arrange for training in domains like carpentry, masonry, plumbing in concert with ITIs as there is a general shortage of technicians in these trades in the UT.
It was further informed that the plan for training and placing 60,000 youth during the next financial year will be finalized in consultation with existing PIAs by end of February 2023.
She said that the department will engage with BRO to ascertain their requirement of a skilled, semi-skilled workforce, and based on their requirements, training courses will be got customized/tailor-made to train/equip the youth for jobs in BRO.
The Chief Secretary directed the department to ensure that training under HIMAYAT are arranged in sectors like hospitality, industries, housing and urban development, tourism, medical labs, water testing labs in Jal Shakti department, etc, as there is going to be increased demand in these sectors due to investment in industries, heightened infrastructure development in these sectors and increased tourist activity in JK.
Mehta advised the department to consult with the concerned authorities in the States which have excelled in the implementation of HIMAYAT like AP, TN and Orissa as well as the officials in the Ministry of Rural Development Department India to further improve the implementation of the Scheme in JK.
While directing the department to ensure that it does not engage such PIAs/TSAs as have failed to file reports with the Government or have not maintained proper accounts or don’t have their own websites and have failed to monitor/conduct regular inspections, the Chief Secretary said only those PIAs which have the required capacity to deliver on mandate and which have neither been blacklisted by GoI nor are involved in any case in ACB should be engaged for training/placement of the identified youth.
Mehta advised the department to put in place a proper institutional mechanism for regular monitoring of the implementation of the HIMAYAT Scheme.
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