Car market leader Maruti Suzuki India Limited today announced a special higher education scheme exclusively designed for its shop floor technicians. The Company signed an MoU with HSBTE (Haryana State Board of Technical Education) and HISCET (Haryana-IGNOU Society for Community Education and Training) here today, to offer a three year diploma in engineering to its shop floor technicians.

The MoU was signed by Mr K. K. Kataria Additional Secretary from Haryana State Board of Technical Education (HSBTE), Mr Mukesh Chadha Member Secretary from HISCET and Mr. Rajesh Uppal, Executive Director, (IT) Maruti Suzuki India Limited. The higher education programme is titled Gyanuday. The initiative will help to make available manpower with enhanced knowledge and skill-set for meeting the future business needs of the Company.

Sharing merits of the Gyanuday initiative, Mr. S.Y. Siddiqui said, “This is a unique initiative, the first of its kind in the industry, where shop floor employees can acquire an engineering qualification. Usually, higher education opportunities are offered at executive level in corporates. But at MSIL, it will be in the reverse order and a shop-floor technician will get an opportunity to acquire higher education. This initiative will address the career aspirations of the technician colleagues. It is also a significant move to align with the national skill upgradation programme to create a pool of trained and skilled manpower.”

Explaining the benefits, Mr. MM Singh said, “We see this higher education programme as a positive engagement opportunity with our colleagues at the shop-floor. With this initiative, the company has taken a long term career progression view of shop floor technicians. A special team was set up internally to study the demand of industry and the course was designed around those specific manufacturing needs. This is a capability building exercise for technicians at Maruti Suzuki and we are confident many people would benefit from this special initiative. Going ahead, Gyanuday will help us build a talent pool of supervisors for the Company’s future expansion needs.”