‘Send UK jobless to India for IT training

British youths who cannot get jobs here should be sent to India for IT training which could improve their prospects for employment when they return home,business secretary Vince Cable has suggested.

Cable,who was in India recently,made the remarks at the annual dinner of Indian Journalists Association.

He said during his meetings in Bangalore,India’s IT tycoon Azim Premji had offered that he could train British youths and send them back so that they could have better job prospects. Cable is also opposed to placing an annual cap on migrants from India and other countries outside the EU.

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On Friday,he told The Financial Times that the limit imposed by the Home Office is already affecting the country’s economic recovery.

Placing an annual limit on the number of Indian and other non-EU professionals who could come to Britain for work is one of the major items on the coalition government’s agenda. The plan,however,has been opposed in several quarters. Cable said the capcurrently placed at 24,100 until April 2011was leading to companies moving jobs overseas because they are unable to hire key personnel.

The limit placed by the David Cameron government on the number of professionals British firms can hire from outside the European Union is preventing the recruitment of key employees from India,according to the companies.

General Electric,one of the major employers in Britain with 18,000 workers,has complained that it has been unable to hire a stem-cell research executive from India because of ‘very,very small’ quota has been given to the company to hire people from outside the EU.

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It has also not been able to hire gas-turbine engineers from outside the EU due to the annual limit placed by the government. General Electric is the latest in the list of companies that business secretary Vince Cable says have been prevented from hiring the required skills from outside the EU because the skills are not available locally.

Mark Elborne,General Electric’s national executive for North Europe,told The Sunday Telegraph,It is very difficult to make planning decisions and to know where to allocate people if you have a limitation on the number you can bring in. We can’t be prevented (from doing business) by some cap that is simply not reflective of our needs… That is not just an inability to grow but it is damaging future long-term prospects. The UK simply has to stay competitive in an open,global market place, he said.

Cable said in one instance a UK company needed 500 specialist engineers but was given a quota of four.

He mentioned an entrepreneur who abandoned plans to open a factory and create 400 jobs in north England after failing to secure visas for key staff.