Agriculture Skill Council of India (ASCI) supports CSIR-NIO in skill upgradation

Agriculture Skill Council of India (ASCI) is actively collaborating with several academic and industrial organizations to boost skill development initiatives by sharing industry knowledge and expertise. ASCI has a broad-based focus on skill development as it caters to allied industries and sub-sectors like fisheries, poultry, dairy, food processing, horticulture besides the core agricultural domain. One of the key objectives is to align the training programs with National Skills Qualification Framework (NSQF).

This is the first collaboration between an SSC under the aegis of Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (MSDE) with Ministry of Science & Technology Institution i.e, CSIR-National Institute of Oceanography (CSIR-NIO).

As a major step towards supporting skills and training in the fisheries sector, on 21st June 2017, ASCI signed an MoU with  with CSIR-National Institute of Oceanography (CSIR-NIO), Goa. The MoU was signed by Dr. Satender Arya, CEO, ASCI & Dr V.S.N Murthy, Director, CSIR-NIO. Under this MoU, CSIR-NIO and ASCI will collaborate in the various areas of capacity building programs by bridging gaps and upgrading skills of local workers in the field of aquaculture and fishery sciences.

ASCI is supported by leading Industry players in India with an aim to create an eco-system for quality vocational education in Agriculture and allied sectors in order to meet the entire value chain’s requirements of trained manpower (in both quantity and quality terms) across all levels on a sustained and evolving basis.

The stated objectives of this collaboration are

• Conducting training programs as per the National Skill Qualification Framework (NSQF)
• Assessment of trainees trained under the different short-term skill based training programs of CSIR-NIO
• To organize the ‘Train the Trainers’ program at CSIR-NIO
• To jointly develop skill development centers for training and capacity building across various segments of fisheries sectors and conduct skill gap analysis for the entire fishery segment in the country or the state as deemed essential
• CSIR-NIO would support ASCI in the development of national occupational standards, qualification packs, curriculum and course content for various segments of fisheries in terms of the technical knowhow, validations and other necessities as per their requirements.