India’s Garment sector is one of the oldest and a labour intensive industry. The sector employs over 51 million people directly and 68 million people indirectly. The employability potential and recent trends on the growth of the sector is appropriately supporting the Government of India’s MAKE IN INDIA initiative and its objective to manufacture world class zero defect products in India for global consumers.
On the other hand, there is a significant shortage of skilled manpower in the garment industry, essentially due to gaps in skill availability and skill needs. The Companies Act of 2013 mandates 2 per cent of any company’s post-tax profits, which is to be equivalent to average of last three years profits, to be spent towards social and environmental development initiatives. The National Skill Policy also encourages Corporates and PSUs to spend the CSR funds more on Skilling projects through NSDF and Sector Skill Councils, as per the Clause 6.13 of the National Skill Policy 2015.
Companies have started contributing to the SKILL INDIA program through their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) budget for employability skill training, bringing in much-needed financial support and building additional capacity apart from Government led initiatives like DDUGKY, PMKVY & ISDS etc.
To make the PPP (Public-private partnership) in skilling sector successful, in a series of CSR funded program recently Apparel Made-ups Home Furnishing Sector Skill Council (AMHSSC) partnered with RITES Limited and have started imparting training programs on Sewing Machine Operator (SMO) and Self Employed Tailor (SET) job roles to the youth in the region of Faridabad at Wazir Skill Development Center at Faridabad, Haryana. The Centre was inaugurated by Vijai Kishore, RITES Group General Manager-CSR; Smritee Dwivedi, Director Operations (AMHSSC) & other team members of RITES & AMHSSC.
Under the programme, free of cost training would be imparted to the men and women in Faridabad and they would then be assessed and certified under the Job role ‘Sewing Machine Operator’ and ‘Self Employed Tailor Job Role’. Efforts will also be made to provide placement to these trained candidates.
To make this pilot a success Wazir Advisor with its Mission to “Educate-Empower-Develop” has started its first initiative to enhance skill among youth so that they could be employable to sustain their livelihood in the Garment sector.
Strategic implementation of these PPP models for SKILL INDIA Mission can give a head start in overcoming many issues related to resources, skilling (especially women), lack of training content, demand supply skill gap and dearth of trained human resources in the Indian Garment sector.
