Initiative to get BPO jobs for rural youth
The Coimbatore district administration has embarked on a novel initiative to get jobs for the rural youth in Business Process Outsourcing (BPO).According to Neeraj Mittal, Collector, they will be mobile knowledge workers working offline and “we want to take this to the villages”.The district has a huge number of English knowing youth. Hence, the administration has tied up with the KGISL, an Information Technology company here, to provide BPO training for those who have passed 10th standard.“It is enough if they have some knowledge of English and they should be able to listen properly. They should be in the age group of 18-25.”The training for this pilot project will be provided free of cost for a period of three to nine months.Ultimately they should be able to get jobs that will fetch between Rs. 5,000 and Rs. 10,000 a month.The administration will provide the infrastructure including computer and building in their villages.As KGISL is located at Saravanampatty, that will become the focal area and youth from villages around that will be selected. Initially the training will be given in batches of 50.
For screening them, a test will be held on August 25.“We hope to get at least 10 per cent of the screened candidates for training.”The Collector said that if this experiment was to succeed in a couple of villages “we should be able to replicate it even in all the 489 panchayats in the district.All these panchayats have phone facility and even broadband connectivity is available in most of the areas.”The Magalir Thittam would help share the expense.
