Bhubaneswar, June 4 (KNN) The Odisha government has decided to make it compulsory for industrial houses to offer students job training at their establishments.

The move comes in the wake of reports that most of the industrial houses are not accepting students as apprentices.

Stating the Apprentices Act of 1961, Secretary of the skill development and technical education department Sanjay Singh said “according to section 3(a) of the Apprentices Act, 1961, industries with a minimum of six employees are liable to engage apprentices from industrial training institutes (ITIs)/polytechnics."

Further it was further informed that even the engineering schools and colleges in the state were not offering such facilities to the students despite the fact that they are beneficiaries of government concessions.

According to a media report quoting officials from the department said that though 1,168 big, medium and small industries in the state were covered under this act's provisions, only 419 private sector industrial establishments have been registered under the National Apprenticeship Promotion Scheme (NAPS) portal of the director-general of training despite notice.

 "At the moment, 30 establishments are engaging apprentices, according to the portal," the official said.

Under the NAPS scheme, Centre aims to provide training to 50 lakh youth by 2020, with the help of the state government.

Under the scheme, the Centre shares 25 per cent of the stipend subject to a maximum of Rs 1,500 a month per apprentice with the employers. It will also share a maximum of Rs 7,500 per fresh apprentice (without any formal trade training) as the cost of basic training with basic training providers.

In a letter to the industries department's principal secretary, Singh said, "the directorate of technical education and training had issued 144 show-causes notices to such non-compliant industries in 2017 for violation of the act's provisions. In response, 31 industries have complied with the provisions, while a majority of them are ignoring government instructions in this regard."

Further, the official said that with the objective of focusing on the development of the skills of its youth, state government will ask all the industrial houses to focus on students training.

Concerned about the youth and their skills, All-Odisha Technical and Professional Students' Organization convener Biplab Prakash Mohanty said that we have been raising the issue with the government for the past one year.

He said “under the apprentices program, a student gets either a three-month or six-month training in the industry to hone his skills. Whatever a student is being taught in the classroom, he gets a chance to implement it in the field. As industrial houses are not giving us in-house training, we are finding it hard to get jobs both in state and outside the state."

At present, the state has 148 technical institutes and around 35,000 students pass from these every year. Nearly 5.36 lakh students are looking for employment.