By Bizodisha Bureau, Bhubaneswar, June 17, 2016 : Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik on Friday launched Odisha Skill Development Authority (OSDA) to train some eight lakh youths in the next three years.

“In the last two years, 3.3 lakh youth in the state have been trained equipping them with employability and self-employment skills. We need to train 8 lakh more in three years from now,” Patnaik said after launching OSDA here.

The state government will partner with Asian Development Bank to set up eight super-state-of-the-art advanced skill training institute and it will also work with short-term skill partners to built significant scale, he disclosed.

“Three years from now, every graduate of an Industrial Technology Institute [ITI] will be at the fore front of technology. With a massive outlay of Rs 1000 crore, with loan assistance of Asian Development Bank, the eight advanced skill training institutes will come up in different parts of the state,” said the chief minister.

These will be modelled around the best in the world in terms of physical and intellectual infrastructure to impart training to youth, he added.

“Our existing ITIs will be paired with them in a hub and spoke model so that their standards in providing high-quality technical training can be jacked up,” the CM asserted.

He said OSDA is adopting a set of 20 goals over next 18 months under different categories.