As part of the telecom industry’s efforts to contribute to nation-building by facilitating the honourable prime Minister's vision for a 'skilled India' workforce, the COAI on 15-July-2015, is launching a massive outreach programme to mobilize the underprivileged youth in the remotest parts of the country for skill training. The programme that aims to reach out to a massive 440 crore young population will help implement the Pradhan MantriKaushalVikasYojana (PMKVY), a flagship outcome-based skill development scheme under the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, which plans to skill over 24 lakh youth across the country by the end of the year.

The announcement of the outreach programme by the Telecom operators of COAI membership comes close on the heels of the national launch of the PMKVY scheme by the Hon’ble Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi today.

Skills Development is a key priority for India under the leadership of Prime Minister Modi. This is not only essential for economic development, but it is also important to provide wings to the aspiration of the country’s youth for good-quality, better-paying jobs and self-employment opportunities. India has an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to become a pool for skilled human resources to the world, particularly the ageing developed economies, if it is able to skill its young population.

One of the biggest hurdles facing skills training in India is reaching out to the youth in the remote areas of the country. COAI Core Members’ outreach programme, aims to address this challenge. Initially, a pilot project in Bihar covered a subscriber base of over 2.2 crore people and the same is now being rolled out nationwide by the COAI core members to cover nearly 440 crore subscribers with the launch of the PMKVY scheme.

How will this outreach programme work?

To begin with, the telecom operators would send out SMSs and voice-based awareness messages to the targeted subscriber base, sharing a specific toll-free number (1800 102 6000) on which interested recipients give a missed call. Once a missed call is received, an SMS would be sent out in regional languages, informing the candidates that he or she would be receiving a call shortly. An interactive Voice Response (IVR) message that would ask for their Location, Employment Status, Age, Gender and job preference would be pushed to the candidate to enable their inputs on their profile. The data would be captured and reports shared in a pre-defined format for further targeting by training partners of the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), so that each interested candidate can be mapped to the closest training centre. Following this,  an  invitation  message  with  date,  time  and  address  of  the nearest  centre  would  be  shared  with  candidates,  followed  by  a  reminder  call  and  text message directing them to the nearest centre to enrol with the programme.
 
On the occasion of the launch of the outreach programme, Mr Rajan S Mathews, Director General, COAI, said, “The demographic make-up of the country indicates that almost 54% of India’s population is below 25 years; and as much as 75% of this population remained unemployable due to lack of requisite skills. The National Policy on Skill Development has set a target of skilling 500 mn people by 2022. With targets so ambitious, the challenge of reaching out to the millions of young people for mobilising them to acquire professional skills needs to be overcome. The Indian mobile telecom industry, which is the world’s second-largest market with close to a billion subscribers, is ideally placed to help enable this massive outreach programme to reach out to around 440 crore people and contact the unskilled workforce to seek skill training under the Pradhan MantriKaushalVikasYojana that has been launched today. We are happy to be part of this major effort for nation-building and look forward optimistically towards the grand success of this campaign.”