The Hindu Business Line : India Inc offers job training, stipend

Ready for action: (From left) The CII President, Mr Sunil Bharti Mittal; the Assocham President, Mr Venugopal Dhoot ; and FICCI's past President, Mr K.K. Modi, addressing mediapersons after meeting the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, Mr T.K.A. Nair, on affirmative action in the Capital on Saturday. - Kamal Narang

Our Bureau

New Delhi, July 14 India Inc on Saturday backed its promises on affirmative action with offers of hard cash. While industry body FICCI offered to pay stipends to ITI students, Assocham proposed a one per cent cess on corporate annual profits for providing elementary education to people belonging to backward classes. However, all the chambers opposed any compulsion in providing jobs to people of disadvantaged classes in the private sector through legislation.

In a meeting convened by Mr T.K.A. Nair, the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, FICCI offered to adopt 50 ITIs this year. Each institute will train 100 students of the backward communities every year, thus, providing training to 5,000 people. The chamber also requested the Government to provide for half of the stipend of Rs 750 per month to be paid to each of these 5,000 people, while the other half would be borne by the chamber. Thus, the chamber would disburse Rs 18,75,000 to these students every month.

The chamber also proposed to set up four training centres to impart entrepreneurial skills to 2,400 people of the disadvantaged communities every year. The centres, to be established in the four regions of the country, will provide training in accounting, taxation, marketing and technological needs of the entrepreneurs.

Assocham suggested that the one per cent education tax be distributed to relevant institutions following recommendations from chambers of commerce. The chamber also proposed to enlarge its Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes Foundation corpus base of Rs 5 crore by another Rs 2 crore to help impart education and other training skills to students of backward communities. In the corpus, all members of the chamber would contribute commensurate to their corporate earnings.

From the Government, the chambers sought incentives to set up industrial clusters in backward districts. FICCI has identified 110 districts with over 40 per cent SC/ST population. According to the chamber, the Government must develop special schemes and incentive packages for investors.

The CII President, Mr Sunil Bharti Mittal; the Assocham President, Mr V.N. Dhoot; and former President of FICCI, Mr K.K. Modi, represented industry at the meeting.

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