The Punjab government has finalized a comprehensive programme to impart employable skills to 1 lac youth of the state every year and ensure their placement or guide them in self employment ventures.A high level meeting under Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal late last night gave the final touches to the skill development blue print that could usher a new era of entrepreneurial skills in the state. Presiding over the meeting Badal said that ITIs, Polytechnics and Skill development centres were still continuing with obsolete trades that were no longer required by the new generation industry. He said that technical institutes have to weed out obsolete trades and focus on only those trades that were required by the industry and could assure placement to youth getting training there. It was informed in the meeting that there were 111 government and 294 private ITIs in the state providing training to over 64,000 youth every year.Expressing concern over low placement rate of ITIs, Badal said that we have to focus on those skills that would provide ready employment to the youth or could enable him to start his self-employment venture. Badal asked Principal Secretary Technical Education S.S. Channi to put up a concept paper of improving placement in the ITIs, involving private renowned companies like Tata, Toyota, Kirloskar, Mahindras etc. in the training of youth according to the skill requirement of their particular company so that they could absorb those youth after providing them training. Concerned about lesser and lesser number of students opting for science stream in +1 and +2 exams, Badal asked B. Purshartha, Director Technical Education to put up a proposal in which every ITI would have a +1 and +2 school in its own campus for science stream students and that school would act as a nursery for that ITI. He also asked him to explore the possibility of neighbourhood concept under which every ITI or engineering college would be asked to adopt 10 to 15 schools already running in their command area in which these engineering colleges would provide education to the science stream students and after their +2 these students would shift to neighbourhood ITI or polytechnic.Emphasising on training 30,000 heavy vehicle drivers every year, Badal said that there was lot of demand for skilled drivers and we must tie up with Tata, Mahindra, Toyota, Maruti, Escorts, Ashok Leyland and other automobile companies to open driver training school in every block so that we could supply skilled drivers to the booming market in India and abroad. Stressing upon the need for counselling students of the schools right from class 9th regarding various vocational courses available in the ITIs and polytechnics, their employment chances in the market and importance of students joining such skill courses so that students could make a conscious and well thought of decision regarding opting for a vocational course rather than joining the increasing army of white collared unemployable BA pass youth. Badal said that Education, Technical Education, Employment Generation and Industry department have to work in tandem to make this programme success. Expressing concern over low standard of private engineering colleges churning out unemployable youth, Badal asked Principal Secretary Technical Education to ensure annual inspection of every engineering college in the state to ensure that they were having proper faculty, sufficient number of laboratories, teaching infrastructure in their institutes and those lacking it should face the disaffiliation. Prominent amongst those who were present in the meeting included S.K. Sandhu, Principal Secretary to Chief Minister, P.S. Aujla, Principal Secretary to Deputy Chief Minister, S.S. Channi, Principal Secretary Technical Education, Kalpana Mittal Baruah, Resident Commissioner Delhi, B. Purshartha, Director Technical Education, Manvesh Singh Sidhu and Ajay Kumar Mahajan, both Special Principal Secretaries to Deputy Chief Minister, Daljit Kaur Sidhu, Additional Director Industrial Training and Jagjit Singh, Joint Director, Industrial Training.