We need more skilled workers in industry: Kamal Haasan

New Delhi: National-Award winning actor Kamal Haasan today emphasised on the need to develop the skills of workers employed in the film industry to address the lack of skilled professionals.

Haasan, who was in the capital to attend the Global Skill Submit 2015 at FICCI as the chairman of Media & Entertainment Skills Council (MESC), said he and other industry insiders are working in this direction.

"The federation of film employees and MESC are coming up with certification programme for those who are already at work in the field and also new ones...

"We will train assistant directors, camera assistants, music assistants, writers, lightman, art directors, audio, make-up, costumes and dubbing artistes." Haasan said the first massive certification programme in the media and entertainment sector would be held in November.

The "Sadma" actor also requested the industry to join hands for the initiative. "We plan to have a three-day workshop in November where we intend to shut down the industry for three days so that no one has an excuse of work. This is very important as it is for the

future of our country and our industry," he said.

Comparing the media and entertainment industry to the IT sector, the "Vishwaroopam" star said it was high time that the fraternity realised its strength.

"Media and entertainment is a huge industry than what we assume and the only parallel we have is the IT sector. But, we have not put our energy to good use, so we don't know the actual power of this industry."

Speaking at length about the initiatives taken by MESC, the actor shared the details of the skill development programme to be offered in various streams of the industry.

"We have affiliated 100 training centres and have already enrolled 5,000 students pan India. We are trying to bring digital convergence across all sectors of the media and entertainment... The MESC has a mandate to train 11.24 lakh skilled man power. MESC did an analysis and came up with 74 job profiles across various sectors of Media and Entertainment," Haasan said.