Maruti Suzuki India Limited (MSIL), market leader in
passenger vehicles, has announced that it will scale up its skill-development
activities by setting up Automobile Skill Enhancement Centres (ASEC) at 45 government-run
Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) across the country.

Each of these centres will be equipped with a model workshop
to provide practical training. Alongside, the company will also appoint fulltime
trainers, provide tools and equipment, and forge partnerships with local Maruti
Suzuki service workshops to upgrade skills of ITI students and make them
job-ready. This will be a corporate social responsibility (CSR) project of the
company. Maruti Suzuki has committed five crore rupees towards this cause.

Nearly 2,100 youths are expected to benefit annually through
the ASECs. The trainees will be free to seek employment in any workshop,
including those not servicing Maruti Suzuki vehicles.

The centres are being set up in designated ITIs in Jammu,
Srinagar, Patiala, Hoshiarpur, Yamuna Nagar, Meerut, Ghaziabad, Dehradun,
Dewas, Durg, Jabalpur, Surat, Godhra, Ankleshwar, Kolkata, Mangalore, Mysore,
Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam, Karimnagar Vijayawada, Kochi, Calicut, Thrissur and
Thiruvananthapuram, among others.

Pankaj Narula, executive director (service), Maruti Suzuki,
said, ‘Through this initiative, Maruti Suzuki wants to contribute to the
national effort towards skill development and employability. With the growth in
number of vehicles on roads, quality repair and maintenance offers a major
employment opportunity. Automobile Skill Enhancement Centres will provide
hands-on experience to trainees and make them capable of quality service and
repair of vehicles.’

In the first approach, the company is working with 29 ITIs
in partnership with state governments. The support provided to each ITI depends
on its individual needs. In general, the company offers support in
infrastructure improvement, faculty training, exposure to manufacturing
facilities, training in acclaimed Japanese work practices like 5S, kaizen and
3G and soft skills like personality development and teamwork.

In the second approach, the company creates a
pool of employable youth by working intensively with students learning the
automobile trade. So far, over 5,500 youth from 88 ITIs have benefitted from
this programme and are employed in service workshops of Maruti Suzuki and other
automobile service workshops.