State teams up with UNESCO for rural training programme
Focus on increasing productivity of crops & modern agricultural concepts and machinery
Kolkata: The state Technical Education, Training and Skill Development department has joined hands with UNESCO to impart specialised training for rural development in various blocks of Sunderbans in South 24-Parganas.
"Our prime objective is to train people to use their skills for rural development. UNEVOC on behalf of UNESCO will be imparting training of international standards in various blocks of Sunderbans," said Purnendu Basu, minister for Technical Education, Training and Skill Development.
The training will begin from the agrarian belt in various blocks where Nimpith Ramkrishna Mission is working for rural development for the last few years.
The UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre acts as a key component of UNESCO's international programme on technical and vocational education and training. I
t also works to support UNESCO's mandate for education for all and education for sustainable development. The training will focus on increasing the productivity of crops and knowledge on modern concepts and machineries in agriculture. A seminar in this regard has been held at Nimpith Ramkrishna Mission. "The formal MoU will be signed soon," a senior official of the department said.
According to Basu, such professional and international standard training will give a major boost to the Utkarsha Bangla programme of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
"We have set a target of providing skill development training to 6 lakh youths under Utkarsh Bangla which will be completed by March this year. There has been a reasonable success with 70 per cent of the people getting jobs soon after completing the training last year," Basu said.
The Industrial Training Institutes in Bengal has recently been acknowledged by the Centre for its excellence. The government ITI at Purulia has ranked first among the ITI's across the country with 25 from the state coming in the first 100. "Our private ITI at Salboni has also come first among the private ones across the country," the minister said.
It may be mentioned at present there are 570 training providers with 1198 short term training centres, 250 ITI's, 152 polytechnics and 3390 vocational training centres that are imparting training in over 30 different sectors.
The short term training duration starts from 300 hours and is completely free for the candidates.
Some of the sectors for short term training include tourism and hospitality, apparel-making, agriculture and also engineering specific sectors like plumbing, welding and automobile servicing.
