The National Apprenticeship Promotion Scheme (NAPS), launched in August 2016, aims to promote apprenticeship training in the country by providing stipend support to the apprentices, undertake capacity building of the apprenticeship ecosystem and provide advocacy assistance to support rapid growth. Further, the objectives of the NAPS are as under:
(i)Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â To develop skilled manpower for the industry by promotion of on-the-job experiential training.
(ii)Â Â Â Â Â Â Â To encourage establishments to enrol apprentices by sharing partial stipend support to the apprentices.
(iii)Â Â Â Â Â Â To provide up-skilling opportunities for candidates who have undergone short-term skill training.
(iv)Â Â Â Â Â Â To encourage enrolment of apprentices in small establishments (MSMEs), and those located in under served areas like in aspirational districts and in North-East region.
The total number of apprentices engaged since inception of NAPS is around 13.38 lakh.
Instead of reimbursement of stipends (25% or Rs. 1,500 whichever is less) to the establishment, it is proposed to transfer the amount to the bank account of apprentices by the Government under Direct Benefit Transfer Scheme (DBT). A pilot DBT in this regard was conducted in June, 2022, which will be scaled up to the full scale.
Apprenticeship training is one of the key components for creating sklled manpower in India and contributes to make India ‘Skill capital of the world’. Various reforms, including amendments in 2014 to the Apprentices Act, 1961 and the Rules in 2019 and launch of NAPS, have been carried out to facilitate the establishments to engage more number of apprentices. The Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship has taken many steps, in consultation with various stakeholders, to simplify the portal and the processes and to revise the NAPS guidelines to bring increase in the number of establishments and apprentices. All these have led to increase in the number of apprentices from 2.90 lakh in 2020-21 to 5.8 lakh in 2021-22 and expenditure from Rs. 120 crore to Rs 217 crore during the same period. During the current year, the number of apprentices is expected to reach 10 lakh. Towards this, the government is organizing 250 apprenticeship awareness workshops and monthly apprenticeship mela throughout the country to create awareness about the apprenticeship among the students and the establishments and to create opportunities for apprenticeship for youth.
Currently, two apprenticeship schemes are in implementation, namely, National Apprenticeship Training Scheme (NATS) by the Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Education (MoE) and National Apprenticeship Promotion Scheme (NAPS) by MSDE. While NATS implements apprenticeship training for engineering graduates, diploma holders and general steam graduates; NAPS is for the rest of the categories of apprentices. Efforts have been taken to bring convergence between the two schemes. Further, UGC has framed guidelines for Higher Education Institutions to offer apprenticeship/ internship-embedded degree/diploma programmes to focus on development of knowledge, skills, aptitude and on-the-job training with industry exposure to enhance job orientation and employability of the graduates/undergraduates students. All the above schemes and programme focus towards specific target group of candidates with intent to bridge the skill gap by imparting on-the-job training and make them Industry-ready and employable.
This information was given by the Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Shri Rajeev Chandrasekhar in a written reply in the Lok Sabha today.
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