In a bid to boost collaboration between industry and academia, the Technical Education and Industrial Training Department organised the first-ever edition of Industry Academia Meet 2022.Chairing the meet held here late last evening, Principal Secretary Technical Education Rahul Bhandari said this unique initiative on the directives of Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann would go a long way to create synergy between the industry and academia imparting technical education in upskilling our youth to enable them to be gainfully employed across the globe. Besides, this endeavour would also help to bridge the skill gap.Highlighting the significance of this maiden meet, Director Technical Education DPS Kharbanda said in order to create employable workforce in the state, the industry and academia in the field of technical education has to join hands so that the obsolete courses and curricula are replaced with the content according to needs of industry especially the local one.
The meeting was attended by more than 50 top industrial associations/industrialists. Chairman CICU Upkar Singh Ahuja, Chairman Mohali Industry Association Anurag Agrawal, M.D. Vishavkarma Industries C.S. Vishawkarma, Chairman Cheema Boilers H.S. Cheema, Secretary Jalandhar Auto Parts Manufacturing Association Tushar Jain, President UCPMA D.S. Chawla, Vinod Thapar from Knitwear Club Ludhiana, Jagbir Singh Sokh from Sewing Machine Club Ludhiana besides representatives from Swaraj Engines, Goezte India FICCI, CII, ASSOCHAM etc. were also amongst others present on the occasion.Apart from these, the Principals of Polytechnics and ITIs also attended the meet along with some pass out students, highlighting their success stories and expectations from the industry. The aim of the meet was to help the industry in preparing the appropriate skill force which is readily employable thus making the training aspect of industry cost effective as it has to constantly incur huge expenses on training of workforce.
It was jointly decided that the obsolete technical courses would be phased out and new courses/training programmes as demanded by Industry would be introduced.Notably, the Technical Education department is providing more than 70,000 skilled force per year to industry. The department is going to launch a new Mobile App where the student data shall be made available to the employers for finding the suitable candidates. With one click the industry shall come to know the number of skilled force along with their specialization in the institute & vice versa. The industry expressed its gratitude to the department for this novel initiative of involving industry in the student training process & mobile app which according to them would be instrumental in solving the problem of unemployment and issue of labour shortage in the industries across the state.