For furthering the “Skilling India Initiative” of the Government of India as well as the national mission of doubling the income of farmers, Public Sector SJVN Limited has undertaken to provide skill development training to 1600 individuals from Himachal Pradesh in the fields of horticulture, floriculture, vegetable, mushroom farming, bee-keeping, medicinal and aromatic plants, nursery plant protection, organic farming and environment impact assessment, etc.
For imparting training in these fields, the SJVN Foundation, a registered Trust of the company has signed two Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) one with Dr Y S Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry, Nauni, Solan, and the other with CSK Himachal Pradesh Krishi Vishvavidyalaya, Palampur, recently. Nand Lal Sharma, Director (Personnel) and Chairman of the SJVN Foundation told that the scheme was akin to the Government of India’s mission of doubling the farmers income by 2021-22 and had hence been named ‘Deen Dayal Upadhayay Krishi Kaushal Vikas Yojana”. He added that the initiative of SJVN was to support the national mission to achieve the target of helping farmers engage themselves in allied income generation ventures.
He further told that the Skill development training to young aspiring entrepreneurs and farmers of Himachal Pradesh will include training and field demonstrations at these universities under the CSR initiative of the SJVN Foundation. Sharma told that preference will be given to the needy persons who were already engaged in farming and inclined to increase their income. During the last year, he said, 1000 farmers had been provided training in these two universities for enhancing their skills in various fields. In view of the feedback from the participants and the universities, the number of sponsored candidates had been enhanced to 1600 this year, he told.
In terms of the MoUs, the two universities shall provide all technical and infrastructural support to train the young entrepreneurs/farmers in various income generating professional activities/courses of horticulture, forestry and allied disciplines like social science, environmental science, entomology and pathology whereas SJVN will fund the project.
D. P. Kaushal, Secretary of the Foundation told that the 6 days’ long residential training programme each will cover 1600 participants in groups of 25 each at the two universities during the current financial year 2017-18. SJVN Foundation, he said, had offered to bear the total expenditure on course fees, boarding and lodging charges besides a stipend of Rs.1400 per participant to compensate the earning loss.
Kaushal further told that the Foundation will also bear to and fro travelling expenditure of the participants from their place of stay to the University. He disclosed that an expenditure of more than Rs.1.10 crore will be incurred on sponsoring the 1600 youths for skilling in the desired areas of horticulture, agriculture and floriculture etc. Out of the 1600 individuals to be imparted training in 32 groups 400 will be drawn from the SJVN’s project affected areas.
This being an ongoing endeavour of the SJVN Foundation will continue to provide such skilling training to more youths of the state.
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