The government has on the anvil a new plan under which it will set up neighbourhood textile training institutes to meet the demands of the textile sector for skilled manpower, parliament was told today.
The Scheme of Neighbourhood Apparel and Textile Training Institutes for Job Assurance (NATIJA) has been formulated for establishing a network of employment-linked training facilities in basic garment manufacturing technology, EVKS Elangovan, minister of state for textiles, told Rajya Sabha.
The scheme is designed to meet the projected demand of four million trained workers required in the garment industry over the next five years. It is to be operated in 400 centres at regional and sub-regional level across the country on public private partnership (PPP) model – government of India, industry associations, and state government agencies being the partners.
The existing polytechnics and other such institutes could be considered for locating such centres in the initial phase, while the creation of new training centres could be taken up subsequently to meet the demand, as and when required, the minister said.
However, he said there was no time-frame for implementing the scheme.
