NIFT-TEA bags gold trophy for skill development programme

Tirupur: NIFT-TEA College of Knitwear Fashion has bagged the gold trophy awarded by the Union ministry of skill development and entrepreneurship in ‘Professional Institute for Skill Development’ category. It was awarded at a function held in New Delhi on Thursday.
In the last four years, the institution had imparted skills to about 18,000 people for floor to middle-level jobs in apparel industry. “NIFT-TEA college has been a skill-development implementation centre for four union ministries including textiles, skill development and entrepreneurship, rural development and micro, small and medium enterprises. Under the Integrated Skill Development Scheme (ISDS) of the union textiles ministry and the Tamil Nadu Small Industries Development Corporation Limited (TNSIDCO), about 15,000 candidates were trained in various disciplines including sewing machine operation and quality control. We had about 200 training centres across Tamil Nadu till the closure of ISDS. Now, we have 40 centres,” head of the Centre for Apparel Training of the college KJ Sivagnanam said.

“More than 3,000 candidates were trained under other schemes run by union ministries. We have placed 83% of the trained candidates in knitwear cluster in the dollar city. We could have achieved cent percentage. but it did not happen as some of the candidates were not ready to take up the jobs and preferred other professions,” he said.

The centre plans to train 10,000 candidates under two schemes next year. “The college has teamed up with the National Small Industries Corporation (NSIC) as technology and knowledge partner in apparel making. With the combo, an apparel training centre has been started in Bhubaneswar. Delhi will soon get one,” Sivagnanam said.

“Apart from training the candidates for employment, the college has also been working to train them for entrepreneurship. It has signed a memorandum of understanding with the state government’s Entrepreneurship Development Institute (EDI), which will guide the candidates even to get bank loans. Recently, it had started the Center for Women Empowerment in the old collectorate in Tirupur exclusively to train women.”