Dalmia Cement to launch building school

Dalmia Cement will launch the Dalmia Institute of Construction at Trichy to develop construction skills among rural youth will unveil.

Addressing reporters here, T Venkatesan, CEO and whole-time director of the company said it was part of The corporate social responsibility and the 70-year-old company was keen to motivate the rural youth to acquire employable skills and acumen in the construction industry.

There was also the need and a paucity of qualified technical personnel at all levels in the construction business and the course content would be aiming at developing supervisory level construction personnel, which were in large demand in the recent time.

The curriculum would comprise of classroom lectures as delivered by experienced professionals drawn from the industry and as well by the in-house resources and practical training in cement and its usage as provided by the company's factory at Dalmiapuram, near here.

For onsite training and hands-on experience, the company has roped in some 20 builders and contractors, said Venkatesan.

The eligibility for admission would be that the candidates should have a cleared higher secondary or should have completed a polytechnic course. The admission to the institute will commence by May this year. Each programme will be of four-month duration and initially 25 to 30 candidates will be enrolled in a batch and the institute would produce 100 candidates per annum to be utilised by the industry.

Similarly, the institute cannot provide an assurance for placement. However, he said there were plenty of opportunities for qualified personnel to be absorbed in the construction industry, which was booming across the country rapidly.

The company has established seven Customer Care Centres across Tamil Nadu and Kerala, and three or four were in the pipeline that includes locations in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. The existing network of 2,000-odd dealers in Tamil Nadu and Kerala would be added with another 1,000 by fiscal 2008-2009.

The single factory location of Dalmiyapuram had produced 3 million tonnes of cement, so far this year against the 2.7 million tonnes produced last fiscal. This fiscal would end up with 3.4 million tonnes to 3.5 million tonnes of cement hopefully, said V Balasubramanian, Executive Director (Marketing) here.