Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann on Thursday launched an aggregator platform connecting industry, educational institutions, skill-development institutes and skilled workforce to facilitate industry hiring.Accompanied by Industry Minister Aman Arora, Mann also inaugurated the Punjab IBDP Incentive Portal, which would provide multiple touch points for tracking incentives received and yet to be availed by industries under the state government’s Industrial Development Policy.The portal will function like an e-passbook, enabling industries to check their eligibility, utilisation and balance of fiscal incentives.The two platforms assume significance as Punjab has attracted investments worth Rs 1.89 lakh crore over the past four-and-a-half years, during which 2,600 projects have been approved. An investment of Rs 60,000 crore alone is expected to fructify in the state this year, Arora said, underscoring the need for the two portals.HUNAR — Hub for Upskilling, Networking, and Access to Rozgar — has been designed as a workforce-matching platform through which industries can identify institutions offering relevant courses, assess the available student pool and communicate their manpower requirements.“More than 1,700 institutions have already been onboarded on the portal. These include ITIs, polytechnics, colleges, universities, medical and nursing institutions and skilling centres. The platform is intended to allow an industry looking to recruit, for instance, students with specific technical or vocational skills to identify institutions offering those courses and the number of students available. Employers can then raise structured recruitment requirements through the portal,” said Invest Punjab CEO Amit Dhaka.The portal will also facilitate internships, industrial training and longer-term industry-institute collaborations. These could include industry participation in curriculum development, faculty development, guest lectures, technology support and student engagement.HUNAR also has a local-employment component, allowing industries to identify relevant talent in nearby regions. The initiative is aimed at reducing recruitment time and costs while creating employment opportunities within local economies.The portal has been integrated with the FastTrack Punjab Portal, the state’s investment facilitation platform. Registered industries can access HUNAR using their existing FastTrack credentials.