CM launches 'Utkarsh Bangla' e-governance portal

Kolkata: Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday launched the e-governance portal of 'Utkarsh Bangla', a flagship scheme of skill development in Bengal.

The e-governance portal www.pbssd.gov.in will enable the state government to manage the multifarious needs of the skilling ecosystem, starting from candidate registration, empanelment of training partners and their training centres and online biometric attendance system.

"The portal will assist in maintaining transparency and accessibility in reaching out to the unemployed youth in every corner of the state. It will also act as a one-stop-shop for industries where companies would be able to find and recruit skilled manpower as per their requirement," said a senior official of the state Skill Development & Training department.

It may be mentioned that at present there are 570 training providers with 1,198 short-term training centres, 250 Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs), 152 polytechnics and 3,390 vocational training centres that are imparting training to 3.23 lakh candidates in over 30 different sectors.

The short-term training duration starts from 300 hours and is completely free for the candidates. Some of the sectors for short-term training include tourism & hospitality, apparel making, agriculture and also engineering specific sectors like plumbing, welding and automobile servicing. The annual target of the scheme is to train 6 lakh youth.

"In its next phase the portal will enable online payments, monitoring of skill trainings, industry interface, post placement tracking of candidates, grievance redressal, etc.," the official added.