The skill development ministry has announced an association with the Tata Trusts to build a Rs 300-crore state-of-the-art training and skill development centre in Mumbai. The government will provide four acres within the National Skill Training Institute at Sion in Central Mumbai, and Tata Trusts will build the infrastructure and run the centre at an investment of Rs 300 crore.

“The institute will have a capacity for 10,000 students. We expect to lay the foundation of this project by mid-September and hope that the institute will be fully operational by next year,” Union Skill Development Minister Mahendra Nath Pandey has told PTI.

The institute will be of international standards, as in Singapore and Germany, for providing new-age skills including factory automation, digital manufacturing, cybersecurity, additive manufacturing, data analytics, digital design, smart mechatronics, among others. “We want to create a future-ready workforce which can cope with the changing technology and digital environment,” he added.

Along with new-age courses, the institute will also continue to provide traditional skill training courses, the minister added. The institute, which is expected to be ready in 18 months, aims to pull in significant private sector companies across sectors, to create replicas and work-like environment for imparting practical training. The government is planning to build another two such institutes, at Ahmedabad in Gujarat and Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh, by 2022.

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