Vijaywada (Andhra Pradesh) : About 10 centres of excellence to train students from varied education backgrounds in skills the industry needs are likely to materialize in January next year. Though the concept had been mooted in 2015 itself, it gained momentum only of late since a lot of issues related to logistics had to be addressed.
The centres will be set up by Siemens, a leading engineering company in partnership with the State government. The company will bear 90 per cent of the Rs 3,300 crore investment required to set up about 40 centres across the State. The State will bear the remainder of the investment.
“These centres of excellence will make a great difference in making students graduating from colleges, readily employable. Siemens will hire faculty to train them mostly in the manufacturing sector,” told Ghanta Subba Rao, special secretary, skill development and entrepreneurship department of the State government.
Siemens has come forward to fund these centres so that it could market its heavy machinery to its clients who are finding it very difficult to get manpower to run them. “This will help both Siemens and the youth because they would find jobs easily and duration of the courses ranges from 15 days to six months. We intend to train one lakh students every year when all the 40 centres get going,” Subba Rao explained.
The centres will be located in private as well as government educational institutions like engineering colleges and ITIs. According to him, the machinery required to train students has reached all places where the centres are proposed to be set up. The training will be in computer numerical control machines, lathes, automated robotics, supervisory control and data acquisition, heavy duty machines and so on. There will be two categories — high level training for 7,000 students and low level training for 5,000 students at each centre.
He said it was estimated that every year 8.5 lakh babies are born in the State, of whom only five lakh reach SSC stage, three lakh intermediate and one lakh to engineering courses. Of them, 1.6 lakh are expected to opt for engineering in regular colleges and the rest technical courses in institutions like polytechnic colleges. “Our job is to locate the dropouts at every stage and help them acquire skills depending on their education background,” Subba Rao said, adding that already they had ensured that 11,000 students secured decent jobs.
Note: News shared for public awareness with reference from the information provided at online news portals.
