KATHMANDU: With catalytic technical and co-investment support from UK Aid Skills for Employment Programme, Nepal Yarn Manufactures Association (NYMA) is leading a multi-factory skills development initiative designed to address skill gaps and workforce demands of their member industries.
This collaborative partnership has upgraded the training infrastructure and capacity at the factories and generated gainful employment through the introduction of an innovative apprenticeship-based model.
Addressing a programme in Kathmandu today, Pawan Golyan, chairperson of NYMA, said that collaboration with SEP has proved crucial in production of skilled human resources and empowering women entrepreneurs in the sector.
“All these collaborative effort has led to generate additional women employees in the manufacturing sector. This has also supported the government in reducing unemployment rate,” said Golyan.
Golyan further said that the necessary efforts should be placed to generate employment opportunities for women in other different sectors.
This muli-factory job creation initiative is poised to skill and place a total of 4,000 Nepalis in jobs by end of April 2021. Under this partnership NYMA has developed a market-led curriculum to standardize 5 job roles that are being uniformly executed across the firms in the industry, including the introduction of soft skills that are equipping workers with interpersonal skills.
This curriculum has been co-created, tested and refined with inputs from four member factories: Triveni Spinning Mills, Jagadamba Spinning Mills, Reliance Spinning Mill and Tricot Spinning Mills. It is now also being adopted by Jaya Spinning Mills.
This partnership has already achieved significant milestones, such as women trainees hired and recruited for the first time in partner industries and special shifts and support infrastructure (including boarding and lodging facilities) introduced to meet women trainees requirements.
Skilling initiatives form an integral part of this progressive industry’s recent push to structurally transform through modernization and expansion diversify its exports to new geographies through improved quality and price competitiveness and improved organizational capability of firms. The industry leads Nepal’s exports.
In light of the above, the event has been planned primarily with the aim of reflecting and celebrating the NYMA-UK Aid partnership’s successes and learning as the pilot period draws to an end, with an eye to a potential scale-up with NYMA and related value chain actors. This will be followed by the formalization, launch and wider adaptation of NYMA designed and adopted industry-relevant curriculum, its alignment with the newly evolving national skills framework.
Nicola Pollitt, British Ambassador to Nepal, said the NYMA and SEP joint initiatives has created a massive jobs for the women and their empowerment especially to the disadvantaged groups. “I believe that this initiative will help to transform Nepali manufacturing industries in the next level with the increment of organizational capabilities,” she said.
Ramchandra Shanghai, chairperson of Triveni Spinning mills and vice president of Federation of Nepalese Chamber of Commerce & Industries, FNCCI aims at boosting job creation and industrial productivity.