Pranab Mukherjee inaugurates first edition of “India Skills”

Union Ministers Venkaiah Naidu,  Smriti Irani, Prakash Javadekar, Jitendra Singh and  Rajiv Pratap Rudy were present at the event.

Today is the day when Skill India is also celebrating its first anniversary.

Marking the first anniversary of the “Skill India” initiative, Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) also announced the launch of five major initiatives reinforcing Ministry’s commitment to the youth of India.

These initiatives are Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana 2.0, India International Skill Centres, India Skills Online and a Labour Management Information System (LMIS). These initiatives were launched by Pranab Mukherjee.

Congratulating everyone on the anniversary of Skill India, Rajiv Pratap Rudy said, “Skill India Mission is like a “Start-up” of Prime Minister for us, and during this last one year, every day has been enterprising for me. My Ministry is a live example of an early stage venture that I and my 35 Co-founders (All the officers and employees of the Ministry) have cherished, have been excited about, experienced nervousness for, but truly enjoyed it.”

“We are thankful for the enormous support that we have received from the President of India, who helped us in reaching out to 1500 employees at Rashtrapati Bhawan and certify them under the Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) component of PMKVY, across 18 job roles and is today a part of our celebrations,” he further added.

Skill India is seeing great traction and is all geared to meet its philosophy of speed, scale and standards ensuring there is opportunity to get skilled for all. In the past 15 days, MSDE has got cabinet approvals on 22,000 crore worth of outlay for programs like Apprenticeship Protsahan Yojana and PMKVY 2.0, to be implemented over the next few years.

The Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY), which was launched last year, has secured an approval from the cabinet for its 2.0 version with an outlay of 12,000 crore for the next four years to train a total of 1 crore youths over the next 4 years (April 2016 to March 2020).

This is an endeavour by MSDE to scale up the reach of PMKVY and at the same time strengthen the system and make these trainings more effective with robust monitoring and outcome. PMKVY.

Last year’s edition of the scheme saw training of close to 20 lakh youth in 2015-16 while the overall achievement of the ministry stood at 1.04 crore trainings across ministries.