Govt turns to students to solve manpower crisis

Employs 300 engg students as interns for civic bodies.

After roping in corporate giants like General Motors and Welspun to upgrade human resource development in Gujarat, the Modi government has come out with yet another innovative approach to solve the man-power crisis in the state.

The state government has decided to employ engineering students as interns in various government departments, especially in the civic bodies.

Over 160 municipalities and three municipal corporations in the state have already employed over 300 engineering students and fresh pass-outs as interns as a part of the programme called ‘TechnoSaathi’.

“These interns will be made to work on jobs like preparing estimates and mapping new projects as well as supervising the on-going projects. This will help us speed up our projects which are stuck because of unavailability of manpower. The interns will get experience,” said state urban development minister Nitin Patel.

 

The state government has already successfully implemented concepts such as ‘Vidya Sahayak’ (intern teachers), ‘Police Sahayak’, ‘Panchayat Sahayak’ and ‘Gram Mitra’.

The blueprint, which has been jointly prepared by state education department and urban development department, talks about employing one electrical engineer and three civil engineers per civic body. “These trainees will be offered a stipend ranging Rs 3000 to Rs 5000 per month,” he said. The training will continue for a period of six months following which the government will give certificates to the interns.

Earlier, the state government roped in large companies as partners to upgrade the industrial training institutes (ITI) to create a pool of employable youths.

“The state requires a large number of employable youths to match the manpower need that has arisen due to large investment inflows across sectors in the past few years,” said a senior government official associated with the programme.