Pilot project to bridge job market-skills gap takes off

Scheme announced in Union Budget aims to help youth without skills break into the job market; one lakh youth expected to get internships by December 2; first batch can apply between October 12 and 25

The Union government on Thursday opened up a portal for India’s top 500 companies to participate in the one-year internship scheme announced in this year’s Union Budget to bridge the gap between the skill sets of unemployable youth and those needed by employers.

As many as 111 corporates — including the Mahindra and Mahindra group, Max Life Insurance, and Alembic Pharma — had already signed up within hours of the portal’s launch, offering 1,077 internships. This kicks off a process that is expected to result in about one lakh youngsters joining the on-the-job training exercise, officially called The Prime Minister’s Internship Scheme in Top Companies (Scheme), by December 2.

Top sources in the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, which is steering the scheme that aims to train one crore youth in five years, said this is a pilot project being undertaken at a cost of ₹800 crore. The lessons learnt from this will help fine-tune the scheme’s design before the Cabinet’s approval is sought for a full-fledged rollout.

Matching locations, needs

The portal, pminternship.mca.gov.in, is likely to be opened up for youngsters in the age group of 21 to 24 years to enroll for consideration by companies on Vijaya Dashmi, October 12. This window will be open till October 25 for the first batch of internships. Candidates must share and self-certify some data about their educational qualifications and residential pin codes.

Candidates’ data will be matched with companies’ needs and locations using Artificial Intelligence tools, and a shortlist of candidates will then be generated for companies to consider. “The effort would be to offer internships in the same districts that the candidates reside, or a neighbouring district if that is not possible. Where even that is not feasible, they will be placed within their own State,” an official said.

Post-grads not eligible

The scheme is not open to post-graduates, children of regular and permanent employees in the Central or State governments, graduates from premier institutes like IITs, IIMs and NIDs, and professionals with qualifications like CA, CS, and MBBS. Moreover, anyone from a household that includes a person who earned an income of ₹8 lakh or more in 2023-24, will not be eligible.

About a thousand calls have already been received by call centres set up to answer queries regarding the scheme, that are operating in multiple languages — Marathi, Kannada, Gujarati, Odiya, Malayalam, Bengali, Assamese and Telugu. So far, 44% of those calls have come from graduates, while 11% were from those who have completed Class 12; another 13% were from post-graduates, who are not eligible for the scheme.

Skills gap

“This scheme is to help unemployable youth who may have educational credentials but don’t have the skills for the jobs that industry has to offer. The internship will help them break through this challenge and give them exposure to real world workplaces and their needs, which may make them employable elsewhere,” another Ministry source noted.

“By December 2, we expect to have about one lakh interns joining their respective companies for a period of 12 months, and the Centre would make a one-time payment of ₹6,000, as well as ₹4,500 for each month of training, with the company chipping in with ₹500 per month from its mandatory corporate social responsibility (CSR) corpus,” he added.

Internships under the scheme will be granted to candidates who have passed high school or higher secondary school, possess a certificate from an industrial training institute (ITI), hold a diploma from a polytechnic institute, or are graduates with degrees such as BA, B.Sc, B.Com, BCA, BBA, or B.Pharma. Those unemployed youth enrolled in online or distance learning courses are also eligible to apply, but anyone undergoing any skilling, apprenticeship, internship, or student training programme under a Central or State government scheme will not be allowed to apply.

Quotas will apply

Reservations for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, other backward classes, and people with disabilities will apply to the scheme as implemented in government hiring, an official said.

Each participating company will have a nodal person to handle grievances while the Ministry will have an oversight over the grievance redressal process. The top 500 companies, identified on the basis of their CSR spends in recent years, can also nominate their own vendors and suppliers to be part of the scheme.

Published - October 03, 2024 07:32 pm IST