Toyota to make rural polytechnic students industry ready

Enters into partnership with Karnataka government for offering Technical Education Programme in selected colleges in rural areas

In an effort to make rural students in polytechnic collEges job-ready, the Karnataka government has announced a partnership with Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC), Japan, to implement and conduct the Toyota Technical Education Programme (TTEP) in selected colleges.

TMC has authorized its Indian subsidiary, Toyota Kirloskar Motor Private Limited (TKM) to implement TTEP and train students in selected technical and industrial training institutes recognized by the State Technical Education Board or by the Directorate of Technical Education or any other equivalent or appropriate board or authority, higher education minister R V Deshpande said.

He said, under this programme, TKM will conduct a one year certificate program for students of polytechnic college at Joida in Uttara Kannada district. The company will train 49 students this year, who will be absorbed by Toyota at its dealerships. The students will also be given a certificate, which will be valid across the automobile industry.

TMC, as part of its global corporate image and business policy conducts programmes on various aspects of automobile manufacturing and servicing to the world wide student community undergoing certain specified and government recognized technical courses.

This is the second college to be included under TTEP by Toyota. Last year, the company implemented this programme in government CPC Polytechnic, Mysore. The first batch of students trained under this programme have been successfully placed either in TKM or its service centres across the country.

The Directorate of Technical Education is providing support to TKM and polytechnic colleges to implement the programme.

?After successfully implementing the programme at Mysore, we are able to convince TKM to implement TTEP at government polytechnic college in Joida,? Deshpande said.

TTEP is initiated by Toyota in India with the objective of supporting industrial training institutes, enhance the quality of students and provide better employment opportunities to them. Toyota has so far trained over 3,000 students across 14 states in the country and made them competent with latest automobile technology.

After the success of TTEP in general category in it is, it has moved on to implement TTEP in Diploma institutes.

"The Department of Technical Education is also in talks with several other industries including Microsoft India for providing computer education to students in rural areas. We have also tied up with the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay for conducting online training on soft skills like spoken English among others," H U Talawar, Director, Department of Technical Education said.

He said the department intends to provide soft skill training to 81 polytechnic colleges in the state. Under this programme, the final year students of polytechnic will be provided training and make them job ready, he added.