New Delhi: Minister of Road Transport& Highways and Shipping Mr Nitin Gadkari has appealed highways builders, contractors, and skill development institutions to come forward to train the local, unemployed youth in highways construction, and to upgrade the skills of existing highways construction workers. Chairing a meeting of Ministry officials with representatives of National Highways Builders Federation and several construction training institutions in New Delhi today (04 July 2016), Mr Gadkari said that the Road Transport& Highways  Ministry will pay Rs 15,000 per trainee (on the basis of minimum wages) as stipend to compensate for loss of wage during the training period. The payment would be made directly to the Aadhar linked bank account of the trainee. In addition to this it would also be made mandatory for every Contractor who is awarded a highways contract, to train at least ten persons for every one crore spent on the project.

The Indian Academy of Highway Engineers will be the Lead Agency and will coordinate all activities pertaining to the training programmes. Standards of training programmes, intake, syllabi, trainee-trainer ratio and other parameters for the training programmes, within the National Skill Quality Framework, will be finalised by IAHE with the approval of the Ministry. The training will be imparted in various trades related to highways construction such as masonry, concreting, machine operation and so on.

“The programme aims to start with training 20,000 highway construction workers immediately and increasing the numbers so that the manpower requirement of the sector is fulfilled together with creation of employment opportunities for jobless youth,” said Mr Gadkari.