Mr Baijayant Panda, Hon’ble Member of Parliament of India inaugurated CII District Office and Skill Coordination Centre at Pattamandai in Kendrapara today.

Addressing the gathering, Mr Panda congratulated CII for setting up the District Office and Skill Coordination Centre at Kendrapara. He stated that CII has always been taking lot of initiatives in the skill development space and this District Office and Skill Coordination Centre is an unique initiative.

Mr Panda said that a lot of projects are coming up in and around the Kendrapara district in the form of railway tracks, PCPIR and industrial park besides others which will open up substantial employment opportunities in the days to come. Therefore it is the need of the hour to make the young population in the district employable through professionally managed training programmes. He felt that the CII District Office and Skill Coordination Centre would help in this regard. He assured his all cooperation and support to make this initiative a success.

CII was born in 1895 and since then working towards creating and sustaining an environment conducive to the development of India, partnering industry, Government, and civil society, through advisory and consultative processes. CII is in Odisha for last 26 years and since then has been continuously working towards the overall growth and development of the state.

CII has been working in the sector of skill development in sync with the governments, both Central and State, to meet the target of skilling 500 million candidates by 2022. The focus of CII’s skill development initiatives is to train and employ candidates with active involvement from the CII industry members. As a part of this initiative, the CII members have adopted 390 ITIs including 50 in Eastern Region and 8 in Odisha in an effort to upgrade them into centres of excellence. CII has done 12 state level skill gap studies including Odisha.

To fine tune the strategy for different developmental initiatives CII carried out district level employability potential assessment in nine districts in the region including Balasore and Bolangir in Odisha. Based on the outcome of these studies, CII has created six CII – PARFI Skill Gurukuls in the region including one in Odisha which is operating in Jajpur.

Under the Modular Assessment Scheme of the Government of India, till date CII assessed more than 26000 students across the region including more than 1600 students in Odisha.

CII has also come out with a Report on the Need-based Analysis of Kendrapara District for Employment to assess the type of employment potential that exists in the district and what needs to be done to improve employability in Kendrapara. The report suggests that in Kendrapara, substantial employment potential exists in Hospitality, Plumbing, Machine Operators and Telecommunications. Mr Baijayant Panda, Hon’ble Member of Parliament unveiled the CII Need-based Analysis of Kendrapara District for Employment at the forum.

As a part of its continuous strives towards skill development, CII launched the CII District Office and Skill Coordination Centre at Kendrapara today wherein in the first phase, 30 students will be trained in hospitality trade and by a year’s time, five to six such batches would be trained and provided employment.

JCB India Ltd would also train students on Heavy Vehicle Operations and Maintenance in the CII District Office and Skill Coordination Centre.

Mr P K Gupta, Director – in – Charge, MSME – DI, Government of India announced that MSME – DI along with CII would be happy to roll out entrepreneurship development programme in this District Office and Skill Coordination Centre in Kendrapara.

Going Forward, CII District Office and Skill Coordination Centre at Kendrapara will also organize Farmers Training Programme, Entrepreneurship Development Programme and also work towards empowering the local women through SHG training. It will also conduct sector skill training in Plumbing and Telecommunications under the STAR Pogramme.

Mr P K Gupta, Director – in – Charge, MSME – DI, Government of India; Mr M K Gupta, Chairman, CII Odisha State Council; Mr Rajdeep Mohanty, Vice Chairman, CII Noth Odisha Zonal Council and Dr Saugat Mukherjee, Regional Director, CII Eastern Region were also present at the occasion.