Thousands of poor village youths can now hope to become BPO workers with Ignou training.
The Indira Gandhi National Open University will train an estimated 45,000 rural youths from below-poverty-line (BPL) families in the areas of telecommunications, business process outsourcing (BPO) and security.
It will also teach them soft skills — such as basic spoken English and etiquette — to make easy their shift from agrarian backgrounds to an industry environment.
At the end of the three-month course, the trainees will receive certificates from independent agencies acceptable to industry.
The Centre is in touch with industrial houses to ensure jobs for at least three-fourths of the trainees, said an official of the rural development ministry, which has launched the programme jointly with Ignou.
Some of the trainees may move to cities to join BPOs, but the government will also encourage the opening of village call centres.
“We are concentrating mainly on industrial houses that outsource their work. The ministry will get the assignments from the houses and route it to the clusters of trained youths through gram panchayats,” the official said.
Would-be trainees, who must be aged between 18 and 35, must sit for selection tests. The government has asked Ignou to ensure that at least half the trainees are from the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, and 15 per cent from minority communities.
The Centre will bear three-fourths of the scheme’s cost; the states must foot the rest of the bill. In the first phase, training will be given to rural BPL youths from Bengal, Assam, Orissa, Jharkhand and 10 other states.