Patna: Bihar is aiming to create a pool of one crore skilled youths in the long run.

The state would put a demand of Rs 4,815 crore before the 15th finance commission to train 40 lakh youths between 2020 and 2025, deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi shared the information during an event organised on World Youth Skills Day in which Governor Satya Pal Malik was also present.

Addressing the participants, the governor said skill development raises one's confidence.

A resolution to observe July 15 as the World Youths Skills Day had been passed by the United Nations general assembly in 2014. The aim of designating this day has been to generate awareness on the importance of technical and vocational education as well as training programmes for development of skills which are relevant to the local and global economies.

The governor asked the officials concerned to do regular monitoring of the demand of the markets and the selection of the skill development programmes should be made accordingly.

Sushil Modi said the government had taken special steps for those pursuing technical courses and as part of it a special decision had been taken vis-à-vis students studying in industrial training institutes and they would get equivalent degree of matriculate and Intermediate courses by appearing in Hindi and English papers of the examinations and clearing them.

Modi also drew attention of youths towards the graying population of European countries as well as those of the US and Japan and said by skilling themselves the youths would not face any problem in getting jobs.

Speaking on the skill development initiatives of the state, he said a total of 1,602 such centres were working in the state in which 3.63 lakh youths had already completed skill development training and another 91,000 were taking training in different skills at present.