JCRE Skill Solutions - Enhancing employability of youths of Manipur

Lairenjam Niranjan Singh *

Skill development in recent times has been given immense importance by the government of India since she realized that its huge population of 1.2 billion could be turned into an asset rather than being a liability, foreseeing the future that India could become the top exporter of skilled work force to the world after meeting its domestic requirements.. With a huge part of its population under the age of 50, it calls for well-trained skilled workers to work for the jobs created by various industries in the growing economy of India. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) across industries also increases the number of jobs created which require manpower of international standards, which in turn ask for not only general training, but quality training which match global standards.

Better late than never, the government of India is going ahead with a lot of gusto towards skill development so much so that it created a skill development office within the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), called National Council on Skill Development (NCSD). Young bright talent have been recruited to work under Dr. Ramodorai, who is the Advisor to the Prime Minister on Skill Development. Dr. Ramodorai is also the Vice-Chairman of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).

The Importance of Skill Development has been echoing in almost every speech of the Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh. It has been reinforced by Rahul Gandhi in his first serious speech delivered to the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). Skill Development programmes have been undertaken by the Government under different ministries and Private companies in collaboration with National Skill Development Council (NSDC), a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) entity, to achieve the colossal objective of training and skilling 500 million people by the year 2020! The central government has a directive to the state governments to form State Skill Development Mission (SSDM), which will carry out the skill development activities at the state level. In Manipur, State Skill Development Mission (SSDM) is in the form of Manipur Skill Development Initiative Society (MSDIS), under the Labour Ministry.

In the North-East, skill development work done in the state of Assam by the government and private companies is at an acceptable rate which guarantees scale in the near future. The Labour ministry in Assam works very closely with private skill development companies, Assam Skill Development Initiative Society (ASDIS) and Employment Generation Mission (EGM) to achieve its number of trained skilled workforce for such a large state.

In Manipur, skill development initiative and its importance is not known by the larger mass and very less, worked upon by the previous governments of Manipur. Even though our state is land-locked and tucked in extreme north-eastern frontier of the country, the organization I represent, JCRE Skill Solutions, felt that Manipur deserves the best even when it comes to skill development of our youths. Manipur deserves to have the best work practices at par with the world outside. That is how JCRE Skill Solutions started operations in Imphal in May 2013 with a vision fired with passion.

JCRE Skill Solutions is a premier skill development training centre based in Imphal, Manipur. It is an initiative by Big Concepts Foundation Pvt. Ltd (BCF). After having successfully established Jugeswar centre for retail excellence (JCRE in short) in Guwahati, which specialises only in retail education, training, research and consultancy in the North-East, BCF started JCRE Skill Solutions in Imphal in May 2013, noting that our youths cannot keep on going out of the state to get training. We understood the need that the training provider has to come to the door steps of our trainees and deliver international quality trainings.

JCRE Skill Solutions is an authorised vocational training provider (VTP), registered under Directorate General Employment & Training, Ministry of Labour & Employment, Government of India. Trainees who successfully complete the training and assessment in our training centre get certificates from National Council of Vocational Training (NCVT), awarded by the Government, which is valid throughout India and abroad. The certificate is a proof of completion of training; thus, enhancing the employability of our trainees in the job market. There are a few social and human resource issues that JCRE Skill Solutions intend to address and solve in the state.

Firstly, our students finish schools and colleges and have a certificate of qualification with them. However, in most cases, they lack communication, computer and life skills to survive in the competitive job market. We all agree that there has been a brain drain for the last so many years from Manipur to bigger cities of India and to countries like USA, UK, Europe and Australia. The state has not been able to provide the best of infrastructure, social security and secure lifestyle to retain the top talent within the state.

Almost every second or third person thinks of studying and working outside the state. In the process, our own backyard has been ignored. It is time that organizations like JCRE Skill Solutions step in and provide international quality training to motivate, inspire and develop our home talent pool, enhancing their employability and restoring their confidence to face the world positively.

Secondly, sour or bitter, our current education standard in the state has failed to address skills like communication and computer skills on a general level to the students. Therefore, our graduates have been as unemployable as any other graduate in other parts of India.

Thirdly, our parents and students are obsessed with grade wars in the schools and we find them flocking the coaching centres every morning and evening. The same parents in most likelihood will show negligible interest towards skill training of their children. Parents in Manipur are completely ignorant of what benefits skill development training could bring upon their child’s life; rather they see the benefits of coaching classes before and after the school. They do not want to invest time in honing their communication skills and personality development, which is of utmost importance in today’s world to fit into the global work culture. However, when it comes to performance at work every day, our youths lack communication skills, right attitude, discipline and other important traits. JCRE Skill Solutions aims to enhance employability of the youths of Manipur in the job market across industries and geography by bringing positive changes to our trainees.

JCRE Skill Solutions has a vision of training and skilling one lakh youths of Manipur by 2020 with a mission statement of enhancing employability of youths of Manipur through quality training. God willing, we envision doing this by locating our centres at places where we can reach out to youths belonging to the interior rural areas of Manipur. Our courses are free of cost to the students. However, trainees need to pay a certain amount as security money during the period of training and later refunded back to the student after successful completion of the course. The idea is to make the students take the course seriously. We have special rebates for our trainees, who are women, physically challenged and for trainees belonging to SC, ST and OBC category.

The skill development courses which are currently offered by JCRE Skill Solutions are Retail, Hospitality, Accountancy, Travel & Tourism, English Communications, Information Technology, Garment Making, Courier, Insurance, Business & Commerce and Security. These courses are carefully chosen in view of the future needs of man power requirements in the service industry.

By default, even though we are not a recruitment company, since we do skill training; JCRE Skill Solutions has been approached for recruitment by reputed companies which have pan India presence. The best of job openings in the North-East come to our office. Recently we have been approached by multi-national recruitment company Adecco, which has a requirement of a hundred new employees every month only in retail!!! That is just a start! In view of this unexpected development, we have added a tab called “Job Centre” in our website for our youths so that they can find the kind of jobs they are looking for. Therefore, let us not complain about unemployment, wait for ages and spend a fortune to get a government job. The only problem to our unemployment is our unawareness and unwillingness to work.

JCRE Skill Solutions, by concept, was started to skill the youths of Manipur but you will be amazed by the wonderful outcomes and discoveries that came along our way. We are delighted to inform you that our trainees are not only young boys and girls but also working women, house wives, aspiring entrepreneurs and working men, who have shed their shyness and fear but embraced their inner passion that to acquire new skills to prove to the world that they are worth something.

JCRE Skill Solutions is truly honoured to have come across such unsung heroes in the state who have good intention to make their lives better, no matter what phase of life they are in. JCRE Skill Solutions find a lot of satisfaction in enriching and touching the lives of common people of Manipur. We truly believe that service is above success.

For more detail, please visit JCRE website @ www.jcre.ac.in