SKILL DEVELOPMENT TRAININGS FOR CONSTRUCTION WORKERS IS THE NEED OF THE HOUR!

The Construction Industry is the second largest industry of the country after agriculture, accounting 11 percent of India’s GDP. Despite this, the industry faces a grave challenge of unskilled workforce. While this sector continues to grow at a rapid pace, it continues to be devoid of skilled manpower. India’s formally skilled workforce is approximately 4% - which is dismally low compared to China (47%), UK (68%), Germany (74%), Japan (80%), or South Korea (96%).

According to KPMG report for the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), the Real Estate and Construction Sector alone needs 45 million additional skilled manpower over the next 10 years. Given the shortage of Skilled manpower in the industry on the one hand and high levels of unemployment in the country on the other, the need for focusing on Skill Development programs cannot be over emphasized. It is in this background that CREDAI is focusing on Skill Development in the Construction and related sectors in a big way.

CREDAI, with its principal interest in Housing and Habitat, is obviously concerned with Skill requirements of the industry. The driving force of CREDAI in organizing its Skill Development trainings is that, as an industry body, it has the best understanding of required skills which need to be developed. Further CREDAI is in a position to easily absorb the trained resources in the industry itself through its members. Hence, there is an excellent opportunity before CREDAI to meet its own requirements & also to contribute to Nation building.

CREDAI forayed into the arena of Skilling sector with its state-of-the-art training program ‘’Kushal’’ in 2011 through its Pune Chapter in collaboration with National Skills Development Council. Since then, CREDAI is conducting regular On-site Training Programs for construction workers at construction sites through its member developers spread across 21 States and 204 City Chapters.

The training is a mix of ‘Classroom’ and ‘on the job training’ conducted at the construction sites itself for a period of about 4 weeks. These trainings are based on National Occupational Standards (NOS) & Qualification Packs (QP) of NSDC aligned for industry specific job role. The classroom trainings apart from technical aspects also has soft skill trainings focusing on the social & behavioural habits of the trainees, including health & sanitation, aspects of workers’ safety etc. which help the workers (trainees) to bring significant changes in their lifestyles.

Such skill trainings have helped the construction worker to gain self- confidence. Once they undergo the trainings, raw/unskilled workers look forward to handling semi-skilled jobs and semi-skilled workers to jobs requiring skilled manpower. As a result, Wage Enhancement is almost assured for all of those undergoing such trainings.