Updated on: Friday, November 13, 2009
Chennai: 5,000 students from 60 engineering colleges will take up 'Certificate Course in Mobile Communication' a collaborative training programme by Anna University and BSNL.
'While the recruitment in the software industry has slowed down there are other core engineering jobs that are opening up for students. There are 5,000 engineers waiting to be recruited in the telecom sector. So giving them specific training to be prepared is very important.
Until now some colleges were paying to get this training programme from various telecom majors. Now the university is taking it up at an expense of Rs 2 crore. The project will benefit at least 5,000 students,' P Mannar Jawahar, vice-chancellor of Anna University said while addressing a gathering of principals of various affiliated colleges at the inaugural session of the programme.
The certificate programme will be a seven-day affair, which will give students a sound background in mobile communications. The training will be offered to them out of the Rajiv Gandhi Memorial Telecom Training Centre facility of the BSNL.
Speaking at the inaugural session, D Vardarajan, chief general manager of BSNL (Tamil Nadu), noted that engineering students passing out from Tamil Nadu needed a training like this to be able to fare better during interviews.
'We recently wanted to recruit 3,000 people for a opening and about 30,000 students from all across India took the exams for the same. Sadly only 60 from Tamil Nadu qualified. This is a bad number considering the State has the highest number of engineering colleges in India. In fact, Andhra Pradesh students did a fantastic job,' he said.
Dr Jawahar pointed out that out of the 145 affiliated colleges that were invited to participate in the programme, only 60 representatives had turned up. 'I’ve decided that the university will offer this free training programme only to students of these 60 colleges. About 1,250 students of colleges in Chennai will be trained. The rest will be drawn from Tiruchy, Coimbatore, Madurai and Tirunelveli,' he said rebuking the colleges that had failed to turn up at the event. The criteria for selecting these students will be decided upon after some deliberation.