India seeks cooperation from US, South Korea and Australia for youth skills programme

MELBOURNE: As part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'Skill India' programme, India has reached out to the US, South Korea and Australia for securing their cooperation in skilling the youth for enhancing employment opportunities.

Labour Minister Narendra Singh Tomar met his counterparts of the three nations on the sidelines of the Labour and Employment Ministerial Conference of G20 nations here and deliberated various issues of mutual interest pertaining to labour and employment scenario.

As part of Modi's 'Skill India' programme, India has reached out to the US, South Korea and Australia for securing cooperation in skilling the youth.

Appraising US Secretary of Labour Thomas Perez during his meeting about the 'Skill India' programme initiated by Prime Minister Modi, Tomar said that new ITIs are being opened up in unserved areas under Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) mode.

He said that to create skills matching the needs of the industry, the ministry is entering into flexi-MoUs with industry and designing customised training courses and added that under the new government, a new Skill Ministry has been created to focus on the task of skill development.

Observing that MoU between the two countries signed three years back has been particularly successful in ensuring cooperation in the area of occupational safety, Perez said the two countries can widen the scope of cooperation and work together in the field of skill development under the MoU.

"Both sides agreed to take the MoU forward and scale up their level of cooperation in the field of labour in the coming days," a ministry press statement said.

Perez also expressed his desire to learn from India's experience on meeting the challenge of job creation and increasing labour force participation rate on such a large scale. He offered full cooperation to India in its skill development efforts, the statement said.

Perez said that that the two largest and oldest democracies of the world have a number of things in common.

Tomar also met Minister of Employment and Labour of South Korea Lee Ki-kweon who proposed to have an MoU with India in distance learning programme and showed interest in need-based training initiated by India under flexi-MoU.

"Minister of Labour, Korea proposed that Hyundai can train youth who live or work around industrial locations of Hyundai in India, for enhancing their employability. Both ministers agreed for enhanced and sustained engagement at bilateral level," the statement said.

Tomar also met Australian Minister of Employment Eric Abetz who proposed signing of MoU between the two countries for taking forward the cooperation on labour issues especially to match the skill requirements of Australian industry.

"If a planned programme can be conceptualised to synchronise the skill requirements of Australian industry and the skill training in India, more Indians can come to Australia for work and it will be a win-win situation," he added.
source:economic times