IT companies not keen on apprentices

IT companies are out of reach for students who want to intern with them. Officials overseeing the National Apprenticeship Training Scheme are finding it tough to even get in touch with the heads of IT companies in the two Telugu states, leave alone making them sign up.

Mr V.S. Pandey, assistant director, Board of Apprenticeship Training (southern region), who heads the NATS scheme for AP and TS, said it took much persuasion to get IT companies to show interest in the scheme, unlike other sectors.

Mr Pandey narrated an experience with IT companies in Visakhapatnam. “After a lot of persuasion and series of meetings with members of the local IT association, only one or two companies responded positively. Same is the situation in Hyderabad.”

Only 4,000 engineers from Telangana state and Andhra Pradesh have enrolled into the Centre’s National Apprenticeship Training Scheme which provides one year apprenticeship for students, this year. Only about 15 per cent did their apprenticeship with IT companies.

Asked about this, Mr B.V.R. Mohan Reddy, former chairman of National Association of Software and Services Companies, told this correspondent, “If engineers apply for apprenticeship in IT companies, it shows that they have poor knowledge. Otherwise they would have got hired as professionals.”

He said that IT companies had never traditionally hired apprentices unlike the manufacturing sector where skillbased training was imparted during apprenticeship to the students.