Railways to start 9-month ‘upskilling’ exercise for employees in January

Railways to start 9-month ‘upskilling’ exercise for employees in January

Context

• The Indian Railways will launch the country’s largest time-bound “upskilling” exercise for government employees to upgrade the skillsets under the project Saksham

What is the significance of the project?

• The Indian Railways will launch the country’s largest time-bound “upskilling” exercise for government employees to upgrade the skillsets of its 13 lakh-strong work forces with a single drive spanning nine months.
• Under Project Saksham, over the next one year, all employees of the Indian Railways in each zone will be put through a week’s training in skills and knowledge relevant to their area of work
• Employees from the rank of a peon to the Railway Board Members and everyone in between will undergo the training.

When will the exercise commence?

• The exercise will start in January 2018 and go on till September, putting through training courses and specially designed skill-upgrade modules.
• The launch date of the project has been tentatively scheduled to coincide with the 155th birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda
• The nature of the short-duration training will range from refresher courses to skills in the existing lining of functioning

What will be the duration of the training?

• Each will be a five-day on-the-job training, or classroom sessions in Railway Training Centres, depending on the nature of the course.
• The reporting managers of all employees need to be actively involved in the pre-training and post-training process to ensure that the newly learned skills can be easily integrated into the regular jobs.
• Groups of railway officers are going to Japan to train in various processes of the Shinkansen bullet train and heavy haul technologies.