Skill Council for Mining Sector (SCMS) promoted by FIMI and supported by Ministry of Mines was established in December 2013 as the apex body to train and meet the requirement of skilled workforce for the mining industry in PPP mode, setup by National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) under the Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (MSDE).
Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) in its notification dated 17th March 2015 has authorized SCMS as a non-statutory agency for certifying the mining workforce in India.
SCMS is a registered company under Section 8 of Companies' Act 2013 and has been issued 80G certificate & 12AA certificate under income tax 1961 in October 2015. This allows SCMS to undertake training under Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Projects for the various companies.
Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (MSDE) vide office order MSDE-01/(3)/2018-AP(PMU) dated 12 Sept 2018 has appointed of CEO-SCMS as Joint Apprenticeship Advisors and delegated the related powers. Now, SCMS has the full authority to approve the training center and prepare new optional trades as per industry requirement and to roll out apprentices training.
The core activity of SCMS is to formulate the National Occupational Standard (NOS) for different job roles aligned to National Skills Qualifications Framework (NSQF) notified by Government of India, in December 2013. SCMS has carried out Occupational Mapping and Skills Gap studies for sector. It has developed skills competency standards and qualification packs, benchmarking it with national & international standards for operator level job roles both for opencast and underground mines and created competency standards and curriculum aligned to NSQF levels. In this context SCMS has developed 41 qualification packs for all four sub-sectors of Mining. SCMS has developed courseware (Participant Handbook, Curriculum, facilitator book, e-book etc.) for in-demand job roles. It has developed curriculum for 20 job roles, participant handbook for 10 job roles and e-book for 10 job roles, which are listed in Kaushal Mart of NSDC.
SCMS has a key mandate to create a pool of Trainers and Assessors for successfully and effectively executing the skill development programs. SCMS regularly organizes Training of Trainers (TOT) and Training of Assessors (TOA) programs to meet these requirements. As of now we have pool of +750 certified trainers and +600 certified assessors from our industry partners.
SCMS plans to up-skill and train approximately 4.50 lakhs people for mining industries including 50,000 new inductees to make them employable within a period of ten years. To address the huge requirement of skilling the Indian youths, National Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Policy, 2015 was launched on 15th July, 2015. It provides an umbrella framework for Skilling activities carried out within the country and aligns them with common standards, linking skilling with demand centers. This Policy aims at –
- Raising the quality of training and making it industry relevant
- Building the base of certified trainers and assessors, and improving the quality of training delivery
- Government plans to promote employment of certified manpower in the country.
Niti Aayog in its report “Strategy for New India @ 75” has set an objective to a) Accelerate the growth of the mining sector from 3 per cent in 2017-18 to 14 per cent, with an average growth of 8.5 per cent during 2018-23 and b) Increase the job contribution (direct, associated and indirect) from the current 10 million (2 million in coal and major metals and 8 million in minor minerals) to 15 million in 2022-23.
‘Human Resource and Skill Requirement Study for the Indian Mining Sector (2019-25)’ carried out by PwC during September 2020, in the key findings has state that the incremental human resource requirement over 2019-25 period has been estimated to be 0.27 million in core mining and 0.58 million in ancillary with maximum demand (43.7%) for people having diploma/ITI equivalent certificate. Considering the additional skilled manpower requirement over the next 5 years, there is significant scope for skill development and training in the mining sector. The survey also revealed that less than 10% of the workers reported to have received short-term or medium-term skill certification and more than 50% of the workers surveyed felt that they will need additional skilling for career growth. This reiterates the need for equipping the existing workforce with right skill sets as per industry requirements. Hence to cater to additional skilled manpower requirement and upskilling there would be need to enhance the number of higher education (such as ITIs, short term training providers) offering courses directly related to mining and also due to evolution of technology, trainings in new job roles, digital literacy and higher-level skills such as data analytics etc. will be required.