Sudakshya scheme: Improving girls’ enrolment in govt ITIs

With the objective to improve the enrolment of girls in government ITIs from the existing 7 to 30 per cent, the Government of Odisha has recently launched a new scheme ‘Sudakshya’ which will provide financial assistance for mobilisation of girls and support for training and placement.

“The Government of Odisha has sanctioned 71 ITIs out of which 49 are operational with total intake capacity of 17,699 seats. The remaining 22 ITIs are expected to be completed in 2018-19. All the 49 Government ITIs are affiliated to National Council on Vocational Training (NCVT),” official sources were quoted as saying by a news agency.

Apart from this, a special ITI for PwD has also been established at Jatni to bring the differently abled youths into the mainstream of productive workforce.

Recently, state Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik also reviewed the activities of the Skill Development and Technical Education at a high-level meeting at the Secretariat.

“Enrolment has improved from 64 per cent to 84 per cent following the introduction of the online system from the 2017-18 academic year. Besides, enrolment of girls which was 78 in 2016-17 increased to 1,916 in 2017-18,” sources said.

To take the technical education to a new level, the state government has also made a budget provision of INR 445.75 crore in technical education sector towards infrastructure development.

Over 156 teaching faculties were appointed in the last four years, while the department has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) in the field of internet and robotics.

“During 2017-18 academic year, College of Engineering and Technology (CET), Bhubaneswar, and Indira Gandhi Institute of Technology, Sarang, were accorded autonomous status by the University Grants Commission (UGC). Besides, in a recent international competition organised by Space Development Nexus and BRICKS, the students of Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology (VSSUT) won the champions trophy and best innovation award under rocket competition category,” sources said.

To put automation of employment exchanges in place, an online registration of job seekers has been introduced in all the district employment exchanges of the state. A new facility is also in pipeline to connect to internet kiosks to enable job seekers to register their names without coming to the employment exchanges.