ITANAGAR, 3 Jul: Agriculture and horticulture minister Gabriel D. Wangsu on Wednesday took stock of preparedness of agriculture and allied departments on proposed “comprehensive skill training and certification of educated young farmers in agriculture and allied sector for self-employment.”
Addressing a meeting of the officers under his departments at the civil secretariat here on Wednesday, the minister advised the departmental officers to prepare the proposal at the earliest “which shall be launched on a pilot project basis by using the departments’ existing resources like training institutes, resource persons, infrastructure and other logistics.”
“There is this urgent need to encourage the educated youths of the state to join agri-business and they must be facilitated to be hardcore farmers,” the minister said while seeking all-out support from each of the officers to achieve this target of combating unemployment in the state.
The minister gave emphasis on creating a pool of young, educated and properly trained farmers “who shall be self-employed and be the torch bearers for the new generation.” He asked the departments to identify the grey areas and prepare curriculum and training module for skilling the young farmers.
During the brain-storming session, the minister had thorough deliberations on the modules of the training programme including the modus operandi.
The officers present in the meeting placed their suggestions to make the proposed ambitious programme more effective.
Initially, the proposed training will cover 5 farmers from each assembly constituency. Altogether 1200 young farmers are planned to be trained under the project with 300 farmers each in the agriculture, horticulture, animal husbandry & veterinary and dairy development, and fisheries departments.
The meeting was attended by agriculture production commissioner Vivek Pandey, agriculture commissioner Bidol Tayeng, horticulture secretary Koj Rinya, AHV& DD and fisheries secretary Hage Tari and directors and senior officers. (DIPR)
