Labour Ministry ties up with companies for career portal 'National Career Service'

NEW DELHI: The labour ministry has tied up with more than half-a-dozen companies in the country for its recently launched career portal, the National Career Service ( NCS).

The ministry on Friday said it has signed a memorandum of understanding with companies inlcuding taxi service provider Uber, jobs portals Monster.com, Quikr Jobs and Babajob.com, IT firm TechMahindra and Indian Staffing Federation (ISF), the apex body of flexi staffing industry.

ET had reported in September that Uber is in talks with the government to partner for NCS portal. India has 480 million people employed across sectors and about 12 million are added to the workforce every year. But barely half of the working population — aged 15 and above — is employed.

While the NCS portal will open up opportunities for millions of job seekers, it will provide its partner with the huge, Aadhaar-verified data base of authentic job seekers, a win-win situation for all stakeholders. “The government has taken the initiative to link all 878 employment exchanges on a national platform, so that more and more jobs can be accessed,” Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya said.

According to Labour Secretary Shankar Agarwal, 35 million authentic job seekers and 900,000 employers have registered on the portal so far. “We will hold monthly review meeting with all stakeholders to make the portal more effective,” he added.

Uber will provide micro-entrepreneurship opportunities to drivers who register on the NCS portal, while ISF will bring jobs on to the portal through leading private placements companies. Monster, Quikr, TechMahindra and Babajob.com will provide job opportunities to portal users. “This is only the first step towards realising India’s aspiration of becoming a country with a globally competitive workforce,” Agarwal said.

Rituparna Chakraborty of ISF said “The labour ministry through NCS portal has taken up a game changing initiative.”