West Bengal to impart skill training to 6 lakh youth this fiscal

West Bengal has planned to train six lakh youth in the current fiscal under "Utkarsh Bangla", an umbrella scheme for all skill development in the state, a minister said on Friday.

"The annual target of skilling in the state would be around 6 lakh youth under institutional and non-instructional modes. Under Utkarsh Bangla, 6 lakh candidates are to be trained in 2018-19," said state Technical Education and Training and Skill Development Minister Purnendu Basu said.

The scheme is implemented bt Paschim Banga Society for Skill Development.

Basu also said the intake capacity in polytechnics has gone up to 38,045 in the current year while the same for ITIs went up to 71,379.

The pass out figure of vocational (10+2 level) was 25,000 and (8+ level) was around 1,27,000, he said while addressing a programme organised by Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

According to him, the department supervises 250 ITIs, 152 polytechnics, and 2,714 vocational training centres operating all over the state.

"We are producing approximately 6 lakh skilled manpower and so far training has been supply driven. Now we want to make a paradigm shift to make the training demand driven. We need to interact with industries and also need support from chambers to facilitate it all," said the department's Principal Secretary Roshni Sen.