Press Release

3^rd July 2013

Day 2 at the World Skills Competition (WSC)

A sneak peek into WSC on Day 2 revealed several aspects of this Olympics of Skills being conducted in Leipzig. Organisers have told that the mechatronics engineer competition is by far the biggest with 35 two-person teams, followed by those for welders and cooks. France has sent the largest national team with 46 participants while host Germany is fielding 43 competitors.

Around 300 delegates and experts from all over the world have determined the tasks to be performed by the participants. For example masons will construct models of the Brandenburg Gate in accordance with precise specifications, tilers will tile a wall with the outlines of the German Federal republic in black, red and yellow, and metal workers will produce a complex machine casing.

Although the basic content of the competition projects is known to the participants, the tasks are changed by the organizers by up to 30 per cent so as to challenge not only the young talents’ precision, but also their creativity and ability to transpose assignments.

While Manu Scaria, Indian competitor in the Fashion technology category looks forward to the exposure that he will get to new technologies and machinery, Ravina Bhatti from Mumbai hopes her experience and training for the WorldSkills competition will help her set up a beauty clinic of her own back home.

Speaking on the eve of the Indian contingent\'s departure to Leipzig, Ranjan Choudhury of the National Skill Development Corporation, the organisation responsible for India\'s representation, explained that the 22 participants were shortlisted after a multi-level process of regional and national selections and then put through rigorous training. The 22-member delegation from India at their training session in New Delhi participated for the first time at the WorldSkills in 2007 in Japan and won in one category in 2009.

According to Choudhury, the primary objective is to send out the message to India\'s youth that skills need to be celebrated. The competition gives the participants an opportunity to meet the best skilled workers from around the world and also provides an insight into the systems of vocational education and training in Germany.

WorldSkills Leipzig 2013 is accompanied by a conference entitled “Our Youth - Our Future”. A major theme of the conference will be “Green Industrial Skills for Sustainable Development”, which will be treated in a discussion sponsored in cooperation with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).