Punjab govt to set up Civil Aviation varsity

CHANDIGARH: Punjab would soon have a Civil Aviation University to cater the need to equip and train the personnel in this field as the civil aviation was aheading towards a boom and had tremendous employment potential to offer to the unemployed youth in the state.   

An announcement to this effect was made by the Punjab Chief Minister .Parkash Singh Badal in his inaugural address on the day long workshop on Punjab Strategy of Human Resource Development - Employment Generation & Training organized here at Hotel Mountview by the Department of Employment Generation & Training, Punjab. 

With this Punjab would become the first state in the country to have a University in the field of civil aviation. Badal solicited the services of V.Mulekar, Advisor, Aviation Services, Maharastra Airport Development Co. Ltd. who had already played an instrumental role in the up-gradation of the Amritsar International Airport in 1999 and increasing the number of international flights from merely one in a week to phenomenal 59.

Badal said that services of an eminent consultants and key players in the field of civil aviation would be engaged for the preparation of the blue print of the proposed university.   He also pointed out that the detailed modalities would be worked out with the Ministries of Civil Aviation and Human Resource Development for the setting up of the university.          

Badal also announced that the state government would make provision for the creation of one lakh employment opportunities every year for the youth of the state.  

Unfolding an action plan prepared to solve the problem of unemployment, the Chief Minister said that the state government had made concerted efforts to set up skill development training centers to impart vocational training to our unemployed youth to improve their chances of employability.   He called upon the captains of the industry in the state to run the ITIs to train the work force required by them according to their needs.  He said that the trained work force in the filed of textile, garment, automobiles, hand tools and agro processing could be gainfully employed in these industries.

Referring to the tremendous potential of private security, Badal said that a security services training institute was being set up at Jehan Khelan in Hoshiarpur district to enable our youth to be suitably employed in the private security agencies and in central security services like CRPF and CISF.   On the occasion Badal released the proposed draft service industry policy prepared by the department of Employment Generation & Training.  

On the theme presentation on Vision, Mission , Strategy, Roadmap, Action plan of new Departmental of Employment Generation & Training, Secretary Employment Generation & Training Nirmaljit Singh Kalsi underscored the need to make optimum use of service sector and adopt a conscious approach to shift the surplus work force from agriculture sector to industry in a phased manner.  " As per the Planning Commission's estimates more than 20 Crore jobs are going to be available in India by 2020 out of which 12 crore would be in the services sector. That means Punjab would also have about 70 to 80 lacs new jobs in the next 14 to 15 years of about 3.5 lac jobs every year provided we have the manpower which is adequately aware and trained for grabbing these job opportunities", revealed Kalsi.   

Appreciating the proposed policy of the Punjab Government on service industry, Deputy Director General Employment & Training Ministry of Labour & Employment, GoI Ashok Kumar said that this new policy would be a path setter even for the Government of India.