Millions of jobs at risk as ITIs fail to issue certificates even after 35-40 years
More than 1.4 million people are struggling to find or retain jobs because they are yet to get their certificates years after undergoing training under the government's main programme for imparting employable skills to school dropouts and illiterate workers.
Industrial Training Institutes, or ITIs, which operate under the joint supervision of the central and state governments, have failed to issue certificates even after 35-40 years in several cases, a labour ministry official told ET.
"There have been some recent cases, where we have issued certificates for ITI passouts from 1970s, as their employers were withholding their pension for failing to submit certificates promised at the time of hiring," said the official, who did not wish to be named.
Another senior official said state-run entities did not employ anybody without an official certificate while a few private firms granted employment on condition of submission of these certificates later.
"Public sector employers and entities like Delhi Metro need thousands of ITI-trained workers with technical and vocational skills, but do not employ people without official certificates. Some private firms hire such trained people on the basis of their marksheets, with the requirement to submit their diplomas as soon as possible," said the official.
States Slow in Clearing Backlog
There are over 8,000 state-run ITIs and about 2,000 private training institutes with a capacity to train 1.4 million persons as turners, fitters, welders and electricians, among hundreds of such trades and skills. The number of such institutes and the courses they offer for imparting employable skills have doubled over the past five years.
According to the latest employment data for 2009-10, persons with diplomas, certificates, or one to two years of post-higher secondary education face the highest incidence of unemployment, at 9.6%, much above the 6.9% rate among graduates.
The 12th Five-Year Plan, which envisages a growth of 25 million in the country's 477 million-strong workforce by 2016-17, admits that "the increase in the volume of work" in issuing certificates has begun resulting in delays.
"Successful trainees have to wait for months to obtain certificates," it notes, advising the creation of an independent National Board of Trade Testing to avoid inordinate delays in certification so that the students get "speedy employment".
For the past two years, the labour ministry has been urging states to clear the backlog, even as it has begun moving to a new system to prevent a repeat of the mess. The process is quite cumbersome - the Centre sends blank certificates to states for filling in the student information received from ITIs and returning them to the Centre, which verifies the data, signs the certificates and sends them back to the states that in turn forward them to the ITIs.
"The certification system requires the signatures of both central and state government officials, so its efficiency depends on states. In many cases, even states are helpless as the private ITIs in their domain haven't maintained student records," an official said.