Wednesday, Mar 03, 2010
Chennai: Free training will be provided in technical and soft skill development courses for third and fourth year SC/ST students of 34 engineering colleges by the Tamil Nadu Adi Dravidar Housing and Development Corporation (TAHDCO) in association with the ICT Academy of Tamil Nadu (ICTACT). Announcing this here on Tuesday, P. Mannar Jawahar, Vice-Chancellor, Anna University, Chennai, said two teachers including the placement officer from each college will be given training from next week, and 1,200 selected students will then be trained by these teachers. The training would include 120 hours of technical and “hard skill” training including programming fundamentals and software engineering, and 50 hours of “soft skills” training including verbal ability and personality development, he said.

The 34 colleges had been selected based on the placement data for SC/ST students in those colleges, to make them as competitive as general students, and this would be extended eventually to all colleges in the State, Dr. Jawahar said.

Chandrakant Kamble, managing director, TAHDCO, said the programme would be funded from the Rs.3.2 crore allocated to TAHDCO for computer-related programmes for students. Students with a minimum of 60 per cent marks and with no arrears would be selected, he said.

TAHDCO was also actively considering a similar programme for non-technical college students, he added.