Indian Ministry of Textiles (MoT) will soon be coming up with the second version of Integrated Skill Development Scheme (ISDS). The Ministry recently had a meeting with the industry stakeholders to understand the things required to be updated in the ISDS and combining it up with other skill development programmes, so that the country has a common system.
During an event of ATDC Faridabad, Anu Garg, Joint Secretary, (Skill Development), MoT, said “MoT is looking for ideas about what can be done to make the system stronger… And ISDS is one of the finest programmes in the garment industry today; we are trying to improve it further.” It is being said that in the next ISDS, the Textiles Ministry is planning to give incentives to the industry or agency involved in it. It is backing the industry to directly take up training as machines are already there, which enables on-the-job training option. The only thing is, very often an existing worker is shown as a new trainee, and that shouldn’t be done.
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The scheme, formulated within the approved outlay of Rs. 1,900 crore for the 12th Plan, aims to train 15 lakh persons over a period of 5 years. Around 3.75 lakh youth belonging to the textiles sector have been trained under this scheme so far and 70 per cent of the trainees have already got jobs. As per the recently announced ‘Special Package’ for apparel industry, 1 crore more jobs will be created in next 3 years. “If these jobs are coming, it means that we need to skill people, and if we need to skill them we need institutions like ATDC (Apparel Training & Design Centre). We also need to start planning our training in a way that it is more advanced. We need to enthuse the youth on why one should come into this sector, it is certainly not best in the payment, then why should they come to this sector and why should they continue to stay in the sector,” said Anu.
The Government meets only 75 per cent of the total cost of the project, and balance 25 per cent is met from fee/industry contribution.
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