Punjab to encourage skill development, make youths self-employed: Minister Arora

Phagwara (Punjab), May 26 (PTI) Punjab minister Aman Arora on Friday said the state government would set up industries and encourage skill development for making youths self-employed.

In order to prepare the youth to become job creators from job seekers, Punjab Employment Generation, Skill Development and Training Ministry inaugurated the ‘Centre of Excellence’ in Phagwara, where more than 2,000 candidates are expected to get training in automotive machine operator and electrical and electronics assembly courses.

Addressing the inaugural function, Arora said the Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann-led Punjab government would encourage skill development for making youths self-employed.

The main objective of the Punjab government is to set up industries in the state and making youths skilled, he said.

The minister said this project would prove to be a milestone for the entire Doaba region, especially for the industries of Jalandhar and Phagwara, as it would pave the way for the youth to establish self-employment on a large scale.

With the setting up of this centre, locally trained personnel will be available to the industries according to the requirement, enabling youths to get employment at handsome salary nearer to their homes, Arora said.

Director General, Punjab Skill Development and Employment Mission, Dipti Uppal said interested candidates for these courses will be registered in batches and trained with expert trainers, after which an industry visit will be conducted with guest lectures and final placement will be done by evaluating and certification by conducting job interviews.

Targeting the previous governments, Arora said their policies forced many Punjabi youths to look for greener pastures abroad.

The minister said, “The skill requirement of industries was not taken care of and the products of skilled manpower from schools and colleges did not measure up to those requirements. Consequently, industries did not get what they wanted and the skilled youths could not get jobs as their skills did not measure up to industrial needs”.

“This gap increased migration. Our youths, who failed here, did wonders abroad as they were hard-working, innovative, talented, out-of-box thinkers and had risk-taking capacity. These things are in genes of Punjabis…For checking this migration trend, we will now bridge the critical gap…skilled manpower is being trained in schools and colleges by bringing them on one platform,” he said.

Commenting on ‘job fairs’ organised by the previous government, Arora said all these were “political melas where fictitious figures were uploaded on portals”.