The government can allow establishments to engage up to 25 per cent of their total manpower as apprentices with certain riders to ensure they are not used as cheap labour, Secretary in the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Debashree Mukherjee said on Monday.

She said the Centre was looking at strengthening assessment systems to ensure that youth who come out of an apprenticeship have actually learnt what they think they should be learning, flagging reports of industries as well as public sector enterprises engaging apprentices for a particular job and then moving them to HR roles.

Addressing the Confederation of Indian Industry’s Annual Business Summit here, she said several large industries have approached the government seeking to engage up to 25 per cent apprentices, as against between 2.5 to 15 per cent at present, with 30 lakh apprentices currently being in the system.

“So, we have said that you need to do three things to be allowed to take up to 25 per cent. One, you should be able to tell us, show us in the last three years that you have reached the 15 per cent limit. You should be paying at least 30 per cent above the minimum rate that is mandated and the third is that you should employ at least 35 per cent or more of the apprentices that you take, so it is not just used as cheap labour,” Mukherjee said.

Government pushes MSME participation in apprenticeship programmes

She also flagged the challenge of not being able to make a major headway in the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) sector with regard to apprenticeship programmes and suggested looking at the clusterisation model.

“We are trying to find strategies in terms of how to bring the MSME sector into the apprenticeship program. But my request is to look at the clusterisation model. MSME Associations can do the theory part as well as the assessment part, and MSMEs can, wherever you have clusters, they can be used,” the Secretary said.

Centre warns against misuse of apprentices as cheap labour

Issuing a ‘word of caution’, Mukherjee said there have been reports that, frequently, apprentices are not really taught.

“They (apprentices) are sort of used for, even in public sector organisations, I have had reports that you take apprentices for a sector and then they are sort of put into HR roles. So that’s really not what we are looking at. So that is something that we need to be very careful of and we are looking at strengthening assessment systems to ensure that children who come out of an apprenticeship have actually learnt what they think they should be learning,” the Secretary said.

She informed that the government was looking at creating school hubs, may be in partnership with the industry, for effective vocationalisation of education from the 9th to 12th grades, post which students can seamlessly move into the ITI (industrial training institutes) ecosystem.

Published on May 11, 2026