15 Days Skill Up-gradation Training(15DSUGT)

Nothing here runs on a season. The scheme has been open since G.O.Ms.No. 43 was issued in 2013, no closing date has ever been notified against it, and a benefit delivered batch by batch does not need one.

Dates therefore come from two places, both local: the district welfare board office, and the training organisation running the course. Neither publishes a state-wide calendar.

The eligibility line in the order is one sentence and it is deliberately wide: all building and other construction workers registered as beneficiaries with the board are eligible to get training under the scheme (G.O.Ms.No. 43). None of the guidelines printed under that line adds a trade test, a schooling bar or an income ceiling, so a live labour card is the whole qualification.

Registration itself carries the familiar central test, the one every construction board in the country applies under Section 12 of the BOCW Act, 1996. Anyone already holding a live Andhra Pradesh labour card has cleared it.

G.O.Ms.No. 43 carries no bar list at all, only guidelines, so what actually stops a worker sits in the Act underneath the scheme and in the separate order that created the tool kit. Two things are worth knowing before you enrol.

The first is age and continuity. Section 14 of the BOCW Act, 1996 ends a person's status as a beneficiary at 60 years, and also when they have not been engaged in construction work for 90 days in a year. A lapsed member is not a member, and the training runs on membership.

The second is the tool kit. It does not follow every trade. The board distributes kits to workers who complete the skill up-gradation training in masonry, electrical and plumbing (APBOCWWB welfare schemes). Train in a trade outside those three and the stipend still applies; the kit does not.

A batch either finishes or it does not, and there is no second year sitting behind it. Neither G.O.Ms.No. 43 nor the board's welfare schemes list provides for repeating the 15 days or drawing the stipend a second time. What has to be kept alive instead is the labour card underneath the training. Beneficiary status ends by operation of Section 14 of the BOCW Act, 1996 rather than by any notice the board sends, and the board tracks that drift in the open: its renewal status report counts, district by district, the workers registered, the workers renewed and the workers still waiting (APBOCWWB renewal status report).

The headline figure needs unpacking, because the board's accounting and the popular description of this scheme are not written the same way. The board's welfare schemes table records the money against the scheme as a per-trainee training cost, with the daily payment listed beside it.

The tool kit has its own paper trail, and it explains why the kit is limited to three trades. G.O.Ms.No. 17, dated 06-04-2016 let the Commissioner of Employment and Training buy those kits by e-procurement for workers the board had trained, one lakh of them, at the Rs 2,000 per worker rate the board had resolved on, with the specifications for the masonry, electrical and plumber kits fixed beforehand by a committee of Government ITI principals. The board paid out of its own fund, and the order records that this placed no burden on the state exchequer.

Two values for the same kit are therefore in circulation: Rs 2,500 on the board's current welfare schemes table, and the Rs 2,000 per worker rate written into G.O.Ms.No. 17. Which one a running batch is being supplied at is a fair question to put to the district office.

The paperwork is thin because the board is verifying a person it has already registered, not assessing a new applicant. Of the three papers it asks for, the Aadhaar number does more than prove identity: the board's trained-workers and tool-kit lists are both keyed to it, and seeding is still incomplete, with 1,587,633 of 2,061,041 applications Aadhaar-seeded on the board's own count (APBOCWWB workers abstract). A number that never reached the board is one reason a finished trainee looks for a name on those lists and does not find it.

One document the source list does not name is worth carrying anyway. Section 13 of the BOCW Act, 1996 requires the board to issue every beneficiary an identity card with space for employers to enter the work done, and the same section obliges the holder to produce it whenever an officer of the board asks. At a training enrolment desk, that is the fastest proof of live membership.

There is no form to fill on a scholarship portal and no application link published against the scheme. Enrolment happens wherever a batch is being formed, which follows from the order putting the design duty on the board and the delivery duty on the training organisation: the district welfare board office, or the institution running the course.

Tracking, on the other hand, is online, and the board splits it across three separate lookups rather than one status page. They are worth using in this order.

Start with the registration number if you do not have the card in hand. The board's registration number search will return it from a new or old registration number, a mobile number, a temporary ID, an Aadhaar number, a ration card number or a voter ID.

Then check the training side. The skill training report carries a trained workers Aadhaar report and, separately, an eligible for tool kit workers report, which is the one that answers whether a completed course has actually converted into a kit entitlement. A trade versus agency view on the same page shows which organisation trained whom.

Payment status sits in a third place. The claims search returns a claim against a registration number or an acknowledgement ID, which is what to quote when a district office is asked why a stipend has not moved.

Nobody is ranked and no cut-off exists. G.O.Ms.No. 43 stops at telling the board to prescribe the forms, norms and further guidelines itself and to take the Commissioner of Employment and Training's guidance while formulating the programmes, which leaves something far more practical deciding who trains: being registered in a district where a batch is being filled, in a trade the board is running that year.

That allocation is visible rather than theoretical. The board's district-wise training batches report puts Prakasam at 110 trainings and 17,536 enrolments and Anantapur at 153 trainings and 14,515 enrolments, while West Godavari shows 55 trainings and 4,701 enrolments (APBOCWWB skill training attendance report). Where you are registered changes how often a batch comes past you.

Three conditions in G.O.Ms.No. 43 decide how a claim behaves.

The stipend and the tool kit are payable to workers who have successfully completed the training programme, so leaving a batch part-way forfeits both. The board is free to design programmes for different categories of construction worker, which is why the trade list varies by district and year. And the capacity-building component that sits inside the same order is meant for the staff and officers of the board, the Labour Department and other stakeholders, not for workers, so a training notice under that head is not this benefit.

The money behind all of it is the board's own fund, built from the construction cess. The order records the board's own case for spending it: that the board had substantial funds sitting with it, and that the Supreme Court in W.P.318 of 2006 had directed the government to utilise the available fund and extend substantial benefits to construction workers (G.O.Ms.No. 43).

The board works out of the Commissioner of Labour's office in Vijayawada, at #33-7-6, #33-8-14, 2nd Floor, Paturis Pride, Papaiah Street, Seetharampuram, Vijayawada 520002, and lists ceo-boc@ap.gov.in and constructionboard@yahoo.co.in as its addresses, with the Commissioner of Labour reachable on 0866-2436311 (APBOCWW Board contacts). For a batch date or a stuck stipend, the Deputy Commissioner of Labour for the district is the closer office; the board publishes that directory alongside its own contacts.