Staff Reporter
GUWAHATI: Around nine lakh students take HSLC (High School Leaving Certificate) to degree-level examinations in the state annually, and a large section of them come out successfully. The problem that arises is the placement of the pass-outs. Quite in sync with this reality, the state government has been laying stress on vocational and technical education to skill and upskill them.
According to Education Minister Ranoj Pegu, around four lakh students appear in the HSLC examination, around 3.30 lakh take the HS examination, and around 1.5-2 lakh students take degree-level examinations annually. In order to make available their employment opportunities, the government has no way out but to depend on industrialization since openings in the government sector are limited, he said. "Every college will have to teach multi-disciplines instead of remaining confined to age-old general courses like BA, BSc and B. Com. And the state government is now toeing the line of vocational courses," Pegu said.
According to sources, the state has seven government engineering colleges and 26 polytechnics. The polytechnics enrol around 5,000 students annually. The government has also started six vocational courses in as many as 381 schools. Apart from these, the state government has been running the ICT (Information, Communication and Technology) scheme in its schools.
According to government sources, apart from big industries, skilled manpower is the need of the hour for even day-to-day activities in the state. For such activities, a person does not need extensive institutional training. For instance, for manual jobs like masonry, carpentry, construction work, electricians, tailoring, etc., a person does not need extensive institutional training. Lakhs of under matriculates and matriculates rendered jobless in the state shy away from doing such manual work in the state, even as they wholeheartedly do such work in other states.
According to sources, this 'work shyness' on the part of the indigenous non-matriculates and matriculates creates an ever-widening vacuum of manual workers in the state, as if for the workaholic people of a particular community to fill it.
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