Investors wary as Karnataka suffers from manpower woes
Investments worth INR4trn, promised during a global investors’ meet (GIM) early this month, are expected to create nearly 800,000 jobs in Karnataka, but investors are worried the state doesn’t have enough trained workers to meet the demand.
Steel and cement makers, infrastructure developers, information technology (IT) firms and other companies rank the unavailability of manpower as the second-most serious hurdle they face, after land acquisition, and say it could put paid to their investment promises.
Some of them propose to use their own training centres to meet the requirement.
Karnataka aims to spend around INRcrore to set up training institutes in all its 30 districts, said Murugesh Nirani, minister for small- and medium-scale industries in the state government. It will also provide skills training to 100,000 people, along with free meals and a monthly stipend of INR1,500.
"This is not sufficient to meet the demand right now--why talk about GIM," said T.V. Mohandas Pai, director and head of human resources at Infosys Technologies Ltd, India’s second largest software exporter.
Lafarge India Pvt. Ltd, which plans a Rs1,500 crore cement plant in Gulburga district that would employ 355, says it already runs skill development programmes and will complement those by sponsoring students at industrial training institutes. "Typically, we run skills development courses much ahead of the start of the project, so that a trained pool of people are available," said Sandip Ghose, senior vice-president, corporate affairs, Lafarge India.
Source: istockAnalyst.com
Published under Cement News
