Siliguri, March 3: The Citu has decided to launch short-term technical training courses across Bengal to meet the demand for skilled workers in different industries coming up in the state.

“The courses will target unskilled workers engaged in different industries,” said Shyamal Chakraborty, the state president of the trade union wing of the CPM, here today. “We will follow prescribed syllabuses and hire professionals and experts for the courses, to be held in different parts of the state.”

Chakraborty is in Siliguri for the ninth state conference of the Citu, which began here on Saturday.

Kali Ghosh, the state secretary of the Citu, said the courses would be offered free of cost or at minimum entrance fees to ensure participation of daily rated unskilled workers.

“Our constituent associations, like the employees’ and workmen’s union in the electricity supply and unions in the construction sector, will be told to identify unskilled workers enrolled with us and serving in these sectors,” Ghosh said. “These people will be trained in batches and then they in turn can share the knowledge with their untrained colleagues and form self-help groups to work in different sectors.”

Sources in the Citu said the duration of the courses would be between 10 days and a month, depending on the nature of the skill.

This time, the conference will also focus on occupational health hazards, a subject that the Citu has not systematically examined till now.

“It is one of the key topics that will be discussed at the meet,” Chakraborty said. “Labourers lack awareness about the possible hazards they face at their workplace, while on the other hand, employers rampantly flout norms and rarely provide them with basic preventive gears like boots and helmets.”

The Citu leadership also released a write up on the Sixth Schedule during the convention.

“We are still firm on our stand of including Darjeeling hills under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution,” one of the leaders said.