For thousands of students belonging to the category of SCs and STs, the State Government has come up with skill development programme to make them employable in the Information Technology companies and impart skills for sustenance.
The State Cabinet approved the proposal of skill development on January 23 and National Institute of Electronics & Information Technology (NIElIT) has been empanelled to run the project.
“Training to SC, ST candidates will be provided by NIElIT under skill development programme,” said Additional Chief Secretary NN Pandey after the proposal was approved by the cabinet.
The proposal approved by the cabinet will be implemented in different phases and the first phase will cover 10 districts of Jharkhand. Part of the national skill development programme the initiative for the marginalized section of the society will be rolled out in about two to three months time and trainees will be selected based on the certain pre-requisite skills to be tested through entrance examinations.
“We are ascertaining the number of candidates for each centre and working on other details as well. We are making efforts to start the programme as early as possible,” said a highly placed source in department of Information Technology.
NIElIT will be offering the courses in three modules and the programme will initially cover 10 districts excluding Chaibasa, Ranchi and Khunti. Training infrastructures are available in three divisions- Palamau, Dumla and Hazaribagh—besides at Nepal House at Ranchi. The districts which will be covered in first phase are—Gumla, Simdega, lohardaga, latehar, Saraikela, Pakur, Jamtara, Ramgarh, Chatra and Dumka.
A merit based entrance examination will be conducted by NIElIT at different centres across Jharkhand followed by interview which will be conducted by NIElIT Kolkata. The three modules of skill development are Advanced Diploma in Hardware and Information Security-Module A; Computer Hardware Networking and PC maintenance solutions—Module B and DTP (Desk Top Solution), Web Page and Digital Photography—Module C. Whereas Module A will be of 600-hours duration course, Module B will be of 500-hours course and Module C courses will be of 300-hours duration.
Sources in the IT department confided that the curriculum has been designed to equip people with skills which will help them in becoming self-reliant and to fill the gap in the services to institutions where IT is used extensively for routine work.