POLICY
An RTI inquiry reveals major anomalies in the National Apprenticeship Program, the effectiveness of the program will now depend on the government’s ability to take care of the loopholes.
Priyanka Yadav/ The New Leam
An evaluation of the National Apprenticeship Program 2016 (NAP) launched by the Modi government shows that out of the 10,000 crore rupees that was allocated for the scheme only 108 crore rupees were disbursed on ground.
The Scheme was launched on August 19, 2016 with an objective to bridge the gap between theoretical learning and hands on training for students belonging to technical disciplines.
This scheme has been designed to help technical institutions in placing students, passing out of their campuses, in leading organizations for Apprenticeship Training.
Central, State and Private organizations engage candidates for Apprenticeship Training. Institutions interested in availing the benefits of this scheme can register themselves with the NATS Web Portal and provide training to students.
A brief finding of the RTI query from the Directorate General of Training, Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship on 13 June 2018 revealed that only 7,358 companies have got registered under the NAP scheme.
The scheme further targeted to train five lakh apprentices in 2016-17, 10 lakh in 2017-18, 15 lakh in 2018-19 and so on. The larger goal of the scheme was to train 50 lakh apprentices by 2020.
Going by the evaluation done by the party who filed the RTI it came to light that only 2.1 lakh apprentices had been trained by 2015-16.
When the scheme was launched it was an All India level scheme but in the RTI report that was published in The Wire it came to notice that the entire north eastern part of India was left behind from the scheme.
The scheme entitles the apprentice to get a monthly stipend based on their degrees and positions, of which 50 percent cost is reimbursed by the Central government of India.
Organizations and institutions are otherwise free to increase the stipend and the cost of that increase is further incurred on the particular institution or body.
The report of the RTI revealed that only 15 percent of the target was achieved under the scheme. Further out of 4.09 lakh applications received for the apprenticeship program only 2.9 lakh students were employed for the training program.
The scheme turned out to be major failure because most of the laid targets of the scheme were not achieved even partially.
The RTI inquiry threw light on the money that was received by some of the states under the scheme and the total expenditure done.
The state of Haryana received an amount of Rs 33.26 crore under the scheme but the expenditure incurred by the state was Rs 59.84 lakh on 241 apprentices working in 32 institutions, that is, Rs 24,831 per apprentice.
Maharashtra received and amount of Rs. 19.76 crore out of which Rs 1.79 crore were spent by the state on 2,812 apprentices, that is, Rs 6,385 per apprentice.
State of Gujarat which received the highest amount under the scheme that is Rs 20.91 crore and as reported t had sent Rs 7,866 per apprentice on an average.
An evaluation of the RTI inquiry revealed that out of the total amount of Rs. 10,000 crore that was allocated for the scheme entirely, only 20 per cent of that money was used and the rest of the expenditure remained untraceable.
This RTI report reveals major anomaly in the accounts of the scheme: as most of the expenditure are undue and not accounted, there isn’t any report of the funds being diverted either.
The BJP government nay governments have followed the rhetoric of job creation and employment opportunity, every time before and after coming to power. A major part of the government budget also gets allocated for the same.
But the RTI inquiry is proof that why can’t we see the manifestation of ideas and targets rolled out through various schemes on ground, it is surely because of the underlying practice of persistent corruption in the name of schemes and policies.
Henceforth it can be induced that the major objective of the scheme and polices launched by governments is not actually for the welfare of the masses but for the welfare of the hidden agendas of political parties and governments.
