Bhubaneswar: In a bid to encourage footwear entrepreneurs in the state, the state government Wednesday opened a footwear training centre in the Capital city.
Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Minister Prafulla Samal inaugurated the centre here on the premises of Institute of Entrepreneurship Development Orissa (IEDO).
The Centre has been set up jointly by IEDO and Agra-based Central Footwear Training Institute, which is an apex national level institute under the MSME ministry.
The centre will offer two training programmes in the first phase from February 2018. The training programme will include one year advance certificate in footwear design and product development and six months certificate programme in footwear design and production. In the second phase, the centre will start a new post graduate diploma course in footwear industry entrepreneurship and development, which will be of 18 months duration.
Samal emphasised the need for adequate government support for attracting people from SC/ST community by subsidising the course fees.
He also said that government will provide necessary capital support to setup advanced machineries in the proposed training centre to facilitate in house local training. This will help in reducing the cost of the training for the students, he added.
The minister also stressed the need for monitoring the quality of training programmes through a system of continuous evaluation.
Currently, the state has around 100 units producing footwear and leather products. “We are targeting to take the number of footwear manufacturing units to 1,000 in the next few years in view of the tremendous growth potential in the sector,” said MSME secretary LN Gupta.
PNN