One lakh skilled construction workers in 10 years: Kushal’s promise

“We didn’t want these people just to be technically sound; we want these people to be better off as people in general,” explains Kapil Trimal, Joint Secretary, Kushal
Kushal is a partnership project between CREDAI Pune Metro and National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC). Established in June 2012, Kushal is formed with an intention to improve the skill sets of construction workforce in India. Being the pioneers in creating a unique on-the-job skill-training programme for the construction workers, Kushal aims at upgrading the skills of 100,000 construction workers in the next 10 years. In an exclusive interview with Subhajit Roy, Kapil Trimal explains what inspires Kushal to come up with a unique, successful training model to help the construction workers ‘learn while they earn’.
How do you see your role in empowering construction industry in India?Kushal plays an important role in empoweringthe construction industry. With an aim to bring in skilled labour in the construction sector, we are primarily focusing on the construction workers. We are providing training to the construction workers to improve their skill sets to get better output Kushal training programs help the workers to improve the quality of their work,saves time and also helps them to grow technically, socially and financially. Kushal has opened one thousand bank accounts for its workers to inculcate saving habits in them. Kushal organises social awareness programs and campaigns to help the workers to improve their social skills. The on-site training programs helps to strengthenthetechnical skills of the workers.
In this way, Kushal helps to bring an overall change in the workers, thereby improving the quality of their lives.
How will this initiative benefit the industry developers?There is a definite benefit to the developers through this initiative. Workers with better skills help to improve the quality of work, save time and reduce wastage, thereby saving on the cost which is incurred by the developers. As the quality graph rises, end users are satisfied, therefore the developers are benefitted.  We’ve seen in the past that when customers move into the project, in a few months they see leakages, broken tiles and cracks on the walls. When trained labourers work at a construction site and the workers are being guided by a trainer, ultimately the end product is of a finished quality and the developers and the end users both are equally benefitted.
Isn’t it challenging to create one lakh jobs within 10 years that also in Pune?Our focus is not creating jobs. We are making the construction workers technically strong and sound. We are very fortunate that we have developers who have people with jobs on their sites. All we are doing is increasing their efficiency and output.
What is a basic eligibility criterion for the labourers to undertake training?Answer: The labour class have been doing their work for the past 15 years. Most of these people are uneducated. However, if you talk about the technical aspect of their area of work they are well aware. All that Kushal does is improve their skills by teaching them new techniques and methods to work efficiently and effectively.
How do you train your trainers?We have an orientation programme followed by a well designed training program for the trainers.
The trainers are first interviewed by the management team of Kushal and then the by Builders Association of India. Further to his training for two weeks. We take the trainer; deploy him with the current trainer on-site for a month and then he is deployed full time. After he is deployed, we have training for trainers programme every month to ensure he knows all the latest practices and innovations.
Apart from training 1 lakh people in 10 years what are the other short-term and long-term objectives you have?Kushal’s main objective is to provide training to the labourers and contractors too. We have recently started a new training program for our contractors. Additionally, we have spread our wings in other cities of India, like Goa, Chennai, Mumbai and Delhi. Kushal will now provide training to the contractors and labourers based in other cities.  is training but we  Do not want the trainees  to be technically sound; we want these people to be better off as people in general. Hence, we have also focused on social-skill training to teach them the importance of education, hygiene, behaviour, finance and people. Now they can have bank account, normally banks have strict norms because of that construction workers can’t open bank accounts. However, NSDC has tied up with Bank of India so workers are nor Kushal certified, and they can open a bank account. There are more than 1,400 bank accounts which we have opened for Kushal-certified construction workers.
Construction sector in India is unorganised and entirely dependent on migrated labourers. Kushal is putting a lot of effort to get a holistic change in the construction workers. How does it benefit the industry if these labourers migrate to other states after taking training from Kushal?We are not worried about labour migration as we have taken this initiative for the benefit of the workers and the overall construction sector. If you look at Pune, labourers have migrated from Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal and local neighbourhoods. And when a developer organises Kushal training programme at his site, he knows that at the completion of the site, the labourers will not remain with him, still he ensures that these labourers are getting trained. The developer invests considerable amount of money, to provide onsite training to the labourers, working at his site.
You can say that your effort is to secure the industry and the life of labourer.More than anything, there is an acute shortage of construction workers. If you look at Pune there is a shortage of around 30-40 per cent. What we are doing is increasing the output of these people. The amount of work they will be doing once they are trained will be a lot higher and better.
We also focus to ensure that all the stakeholders always come together. We organise contractors meet every three months, but now they come on board and speak of their experiences, their problems and how to address those problems. Like I said we do social-skill training. Last year we had Kushal Cricket Premier League (KCPL), where developers, construction workers, trainers, contractors and sponsors collaborated to play cricket on a single platform.
As of now how many developers have joined hands with Kushal?Approximately 75 developers took part in the initiative. The moment we finish training at one site, we go to the next one. Just 2 years ago,  when we started the programme,  developers thought this was waste of time, the contactors thought they are going to make them pay more and the workers thought it was a gimmick. But today,  the workers are rushing to take the training, contractors’ values it because they know  output and quality is increasing, the developers are contended because whatever work is going on-site is supervised by the trainer and that the quality is rising up and wastage is reducing, which leads to cost saving.
What made this training programme successful? This is on the site, hands-on training programme. The worker doesn’t have to travel or invest extra time to take this training. We developed the model which will train them on the site, which will be 80 per cent practical and 20 per cent theory. What is important is that the workers will get their daily wages in order to get trained; they have to get their daily wages because they need it. This is a model was initiated by Kushal, which proved to be successful.
How much is the NSDC funding?Since the year 2012, Kushal has been funded approximately ` 20 crore from NSDC.
How much is the developers’ share in funding Kushal? It is 50:50 funding from NSDC and the developers. A lot of developers have come forward and donated money to Kushal.
What would happen after 3 years when NSDC stops funding?We need the government to understand the need and importance of training the labourers and contractors to bring in a positive change in the construction sector in India. Even after this programme becomes successful; it will take a lot of time for the construction worker to come forward and enrol for a training programme. For that to happen, we will have to train around 50,000 people. In the last 3 years, we have got developers, contractors and trainees on board to understand the importance of training.

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