Chennai: In the 2022-23 academic year, students exceeding 13 lakh have completed skill development programme under the "Naan Mudalvan Scheme" and over a lakh successful aspirants have got excellent job opportunities, Chief Minister M K Stalin said here on Monday.
In his address at an "victory event" held here to mark the successful completion of one year of the scheme, Stalin said the programme is his dream project, that was formulated following his interaction with industry captains who pointed to the difficulty in finding young people with employable skills.
'Naan Mudalvan,' (I am the first) the skill development and employability facilitation programme was launched on March 1, 2022 by the Chief Minister on his birthday. The skill development programme offers training in a range of areas including genomic mastery, plant tissue culture, algal technology, graphic design, machine learning, artificial intelligence, robotics, internet of things, cloud computing, big data analytics, block chain development, Chat GPT and so on.
Stalin said, initially, the annual target under the scheme was to provide skill development training to 10 lakh youths. However, in the first year (2022-23) itself, 13 lakh (13,14,519 students of engineering, arts and science colleges) students have been trained. "This is the biggest achievement of this project. The next achievement is such students who have got training have got very good job opportunities."
Education should be aimed at acquiring requisite skills and it should not get confined to getting a degree alone, he said. Under the scheme, training has been provided in 445 engineering colleges and out of the 85,053 trained students (final year), 65,034 have got very good placement opportunities. As regards arts colleges, 83,223 students, out of 99,230 aspirants have been placed in various companies. Also, through job camps, over 25,000 students from engineering and arts and science colleges have got jobs.
As part of the scheme, coaching programme for aspirants to the civil services was devised and an incentive package of Rs 7,500 per month (to prepare for preliminary exam) and Rs 25,000 a month (to those who get through the prelims) has been recently announced. "This is the first year victory of this scheme."
The Chief Minister referred to other state schemes to encourage students like 'Kalloori Kanavu' (College dream) for school students. Competitions are being held continuously to provide a platform to students to demonstrate their skills. For the competitions to be held next month in the state, so far 58,000 students have registered. According to the National Skill Development Corporation data, Tamil Nadu holds the first place in terms of registrations for competitions.
He said: "The goal of the Dravidian model of governance is to establish social justice and all the schemes are aimed at realising it." Stalin gave away appointment orders to aspirants under the scheme, launched skill development based courses in 495 polytechnic colleges and 432 Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) and distributed cheques of Rs 25,000 (incentive) to 10 aspirants of civil services. He also launched a hackathon.
On the occasion, the Tamil Nadu government inked pacts with companies including Tata Power Solar and Ernst and Young to provide skill development training to the youth from the state. (PTI)
