To counter Naxalism, UP police plans training, jobs for youths
LUCKNOW: In a move aimed at bringing back the youths to mainstream in Naxal-affected areas, the Mirzapur police are organising a skill development programme that guarantees jobs to participants.
Set to begin from Monday, the training programme will be attended by youths, aged between 18 and 28 years, from 106 villages around Mirzapur district.
“The selected youths will be provided 100% job placements in Bengaluru and Hyderabad,” said Ashish Tewari, superintendent of police (SP), Mirzapur, and the brain behind the initiative.
“Since poverty and unemployment are mainly responsible for pushing youths towards Naxalism, we thought the best way to counter this is to get them jobs,” said Ashish, a 2012 batch IPS officer. The selection camp for the skill development programme will be conducted by Nudge Life Skills Foundation of Bengaluru, which is a group of some of India’s brightest entrepreneurs, leaders and change-makers.
“The organisation has been roped to impart training as well as provide jobs to participants. Earlier such training exercises did not give the desired results as they were not supplemented with jobs,” he said.
Already, district police teams have selected nearly 200 youths by organising camps in naxal-affected villages. “Of these youths, around 63 will be screened for the skill development camp to be held in Bengaluru.
Director of Nudge Life Skills Foundation Sri Ram Venkat will be in Mirzapur when the camp kicks off on Monday,” he said.
Talking to HT over phone, Sri Ram Venkat said the selected youths will be trained in the organisation’s flagship programme, Gurukul.
“They will be provided three-month training in plumbing in Bengaluru. Thereafter, they will be employed in different companies in Bengaluru and Hyderabad,” he added.
The trained youths will get the initial salary starting from ₹7,500 to ₹ 15,000. He said they will later be presented as role model for other youngsters to motivate them to join the programme.
“In past two years, we have managed to provide jobs to nearly 1200 youths from Karnataka, Odisha and Jharkhand after skill development programme. Around 80 per cent of the youths belong from rural areas and 20 per cent from urban slum areas,” said Sri Ram.
He said such programme as a part of pilot project is being organised in UP for the first time and will be expanded based on the response and outcome of it.