Finolex Pipes Partners With Kushal To Propagate Plumbing Skills in India

On the occasion of World Youth Skills Day, Finolex Pipes, India’s largest manufacturer of PVC Pipes, announced its plan to collaborate with Kushal to improve the skills of the building services workforce by imparting training in the area of plumbing. Kushal is a partnership project between Confederation of Real Estate Developers Association of India (CREDAI) Pune Metro and National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC).

“The objective of this scheme is to encourage skill development by providing monetary rewards for successful completion of approved training programs. Fundamentally, we are celebrating people who work with their own hands, who form the backbone of any society. We need people who believe in working hard and adding value in whatever they do. A famous quote in Sanskrit goes “yathA hyekena chakreNa na rathasya gatir_bhavet | evam puruSha_kAreNa vinA daivam na sidhyati (यथा ह्येकेन चक्रेण न रथस्य गतिर्भवेत्। एवं पुरुषकारेण विना दैवं न सिध्यति)” which means As a chariot (cart) can’t move with one wheel, similarly, without hard work destiny doesn’t bring fruit.” Executive Chairman of Finolex Industries Ltd, Mr. Prakash Chhabria said here, who also launched the Pradhan Mantri Kushal Yojana in Pune.

Kushal model is mix of ‘on-job-on-site-earn-while-you-learn’, wherein 80 per cent is practical on-the-job-training and 20 per cent is classroom training, entailing zero wage loss for workers. The training duration is of two months/eight weeks. So far Kushal has trained 22,408 construction workers.

“As a pilot project, Finolex Pipes will be sponsoring the training of 500 trainees with the long term aim of training 100,000 workers in the next five to seven years, who will be taught the entire plumbing course along with additional inputs on on-site-training from Finolex Industries Ltd,” Executive Chairman of Finolex Industries Ltd, Prakash Chhabria said.

The absence of proper training programmes has kept many plumbers from progressing in their field and the lack of a defined career path has thwarted their aspirations. The Finolex Kushal training programme will help these plumbers to learn technical skills faster which in turn will help them gain personal growth and higher income.

Along with this, Finolex Pipes is also providing Rs 10 lakhs to sponsor the team from Kushal that will be participating in the World Skills Competition, Sao Paulo, August, 2015. The cheque was handed over to the Kushal team by Mr Chhabria, Finolex Industries Limited on World Youth Skills Day/Kushalta Diwas at Yashwantrao Chavan Academy of Development Administration (YASHADA).

Vice Chairman Kushal, Mr. Ranjit Naiknavare added that, “This is phase one of plumbing training for which Finolex is partnering with us. Besides, they have sponsored two Kushal trained construction workers representing India at Sao Paulo, Brazil for World Skils Competition, in August 2015.”

According to President of CREDAI Pune Metro, Mr. Shantilal Katariya, the training program of KUSHAL has now been recognized nationally as a one of the doable training module of construction workers. Kushal has trained more than 20 thousand labourers in 3 and half year and in next 10 years we are planning to train more than 1 lac labourer.

“The CREDAI-National has announced to implement the same on PAN India level I am sure that this program under the guidance of Mr. J. P. Shroff, Chairman, KUSHAL will surely be able to achieve the Prime Minister’s Vision of ‘Skilled India’,” Mr Katariya said.