Gandhinagar: Despite the Gujarat government paying over Rs 7 lakhs to the Adani Group for a skill development programme for the unemployed youth of the Scheduled Castes in the state, the latter has not trained even a single community member, the State government said on Friday. In a reply to a question by Jamjodhpur MLA Hemant Ahir, the Gujarat government admitted that not a single youth had taken the training in the skill development programme.
In its response, the government said in a written reply that on March 5, 2019 and August 6, 2019, work orders were given to Adani for the skill development programme worth Rs 13.98 crore. While the Gujarat government paid Rs 7.87 lakhs to the Adani Group in two years under the proposed training programme, the latter did not start the programme at all.
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The proposed programme was part of a special project, which was launched by the Department of Social Justice of the Gujarat government. The programme was aimed at improving the skills of youth especially the women of the Scheduled Castes in Gujarat and in turn help in creating employment opportunities among the skilled youth.
However, the programme has confined to mere paper work with no progress on ground. Jamjodhpur MLA Hemant Ahir had in his question asked the State government as to how many youths had been provided the training under the skill development programme. Pertinently, the budget session of the Gujarat assembly is going on. On Tuesday, the State government introduced a bill for making the Gujarati language teaching mandatory from Class I to VIII at the government schools in the state.
