Page 14 - Plastics News July 2020

“Apprenticeship - The best way forward to hire workforce”

India is a young nation with high population. Being an Mr. Vasu Sharma said that while all the other professional
emerging economy, there is demand for industry ready programs are supply based, apprenticeship comes across a
skilled manpower. A large percentage of workforces keen on program which is actually demand based where the industry
joining the industry is not industry ready and that has been has come forward and recognised its gaps & therefore
one of the primary reason for low employability in the believes in training the people to bridge the existing gaps.
country. In the current situation which has emerged in the Mr. Sharma also provided basic knowledge about what
country due to COVID 19 outbreak the biggest challenge, we apprenticeship actually means and also shed light on the
can foresee is the crunch of manpower in the industry. apprenticeship act 1961 for better understanding of the
AIPMA believed that Apprenticeship could bridge this gap topic. Most importantly Mr. Sharma discussed the Flexible-
between demand and supply. Apprenticeship potential in Discretion to Companies to Design / Plan wherein he
India remains largely untapped. Apprenticeship model highlighted all the aspects required for the same ranging
with new provisions has several positives for the from Band, Flexibility, Design to Self Regulation. He ended
employers as well as apprentices. Therefore, AIPMA his talk by sharing significant facts and figures about
organised a session on “Apprenticeship - The best way Apprenticeship in India today.
forward to hire workforce”. Mr. Dhruv Mittal, began by talking about the National
Our expert panellist for the day were: Apprentice Promotion Scheme (NAPS), wherein he
highlighted important elements of the scheme such as
1. Mr. Salil Kumar Sharma, G.M & Corporate Head-HR, IR, Program Structure, Financial Support, Eligibility,
Admin & CSR. Lumax Auto Technologies Limited.
Technology Enabled and the Key Stakeholders of the
2. Mr. Dhruv Mittal, Leading Apprenticeship Vertical at Scheme. For the industry perspective, Mr. Mittal spoke
Eduvantage, Third Party Aggregators. about the various benefits the employer could get out of
3. Mr. Vasu Sharma, Apprenticeship Division, NSDC. apprenticeship scheme. He ended his talk by explaining how
the scheme works and its program flow.
The session began with welcome address by the President,
AIPMA, Mr. Jagat Killawala. He shared some very significant Mr. Salil Kumar Sharma, said that due to the ongoing
industry figures with the participants. He said, “Although pandemic situation, major labour crunch is expected to
India's higher education system contributes about 3.5 lakh occur specially in the Delhi-NCR region which makes NAPS or
engineers and 2.5 million university graduates annually to Apprenticeship as the most useful and handy options. Like
the workforce, an estimated five million graduates remain earlier, the industry had to depend upon contract labour, but
unemployed at any given time. India has set a target of with such models the industry now has trained and skilled
skilling 500 million people with employable skills by 2022. labour. It also helps to connect with people who have
Thus apprenticeship will play a crucial role in the task of up- bandwidth to serve at Pan India basis. The role of skill
skilling India's workforce and increasing employability. It can council too which was not earlier much defined, they have
rightly skill the youth and provide them opportunities for now come forward to help the industry, listen and answer
self-growth as well as contribute to the country's economy. the queries, assessment, documentation etc.
Therefore, undoubtedly – irrespective of the industry – The Webinar was concluded with the Q/A Session by taking
investing in an apprenticeship scheme can provide real various questions from the participants. The questions and
benefits and contribute to the bottom line of an queries were very patiently answered by the panellist.
organisation.

July 2020 14 Plastics News