Onlykashmir.in News Desk
Vocational trainers took to the streets of Srinagar on Thursday, staging a protest to demand the removal of private companies from the vocational education system and the framing of a concrete job policy for trainers working in government schools. The demonstration was organised by the Jammu and Kashmir Vocational Trainers Welfare Association, whose members said years of service in government institutions have not translated into a defined, long-term employment framework.
The association’s core grievance centres on the continued role of private Vocational Training Providers, empanelled by the National Skill Development Corporation, in engaging and managing trainers on the ground. Members argue that this arrangement has left them without job security despite the programme’s steady expansion since it was introduced in Jammu and Kashmir under the Samagra Shiksha scheme in 2016.
Vocational subjects, spanning information technology, healthcare, agriculture, tourism and hospitality, and the automotive sector, are now taught in more than a thousand government secondary and higher secondary schools across the Union Territory, according to Samagra Shiksha figures. The programme’s footprint widened further in 2026, when authorities initiated recruitment for 2,294 contractual vocational trainer positions spread across 1,346 government schools, a move that underscores how heavily the system continues to rely on contractual, rather than permanent, engagement.
Trainers at Thursday’s protest reiterated three central demands: an end to the involvement of private companies in the engagement mechanism, a stop to what they term ongoing exploitation, and the formulation of a clear job policy that offers a defined career path. The association has separately flagged concerns in the past over delayed honorarium payments routed through the private VTPs.
Earlier this year, the government did approve a hike in the monthly honorarium paid to vocational trainers, with those engaged before April 1, 2022 receiving Rs 25,000 per month and those engaged after that date receiving Rs 22,000, both revised rates effective from April 1, 2024. Trainers, however, say the honorarium revision does not address their underlying demand for structural job security within the government system rather than through private intermediaries.
