Apprentice fair gets poor response

The Apprentice Fair conducted for the engineering graduates and diploma holders at Karnataka Polytechnic (KPT) on Tuesday turned out to be a disaster due to poor response from the candidates.

The fair conducted by the Board of Apprentice Training and State Directorate of Technical Education was open for the engineering graduates and diploma holders of 2009, 2010 and 2011 batches in all branches. Even though the organisers had sent invitations to more than 70 local companies in and around Mangalore, very few turned up for the fair.

As the apprentice requires all semester marks card and convocation certificate, the companies who attended the fair didn’t consider the current batch, which will be passing out next April.

Though the main focus was on the candidates from Dakshina Kannada and Udupi, others were also allowed to attend the fair.

Why flop?

According to the regulations of Board of Apprentice Training, the candidate requires to possess marks card as well as convocation certificate to get registered under the Board. This regulation prevents the ongoing batch to attend the interviews. The eligible candidates for the fair were already passed out in last April, and by now majority of them were placed in different companies.

Another factor is the meager allowances offered for the apprentices. In Government sector, an apprentice gets only Rs 2500 to Rs 3000 as stipend whereas in private sector, it will go up to Rs 5,000, a HR executive said.

Poor response from firms

Not many companies turned up to the apprentice fair. “We have sent invitations to 72 local companies to participate in the fair, but only 2-3 companies responded and participated,” said KPT Placement Officer Keerthi. “If the apprentice Board could allow the ongoing batch too to attend the fair, the response would have been much better,” she said.

Interestingly, the Titan Industries Limited, Bangalore, stall saw many candidates rushing for registration due to the fact that they were taking candidates as regular staff. “The selection process consists of two round of written test and two rounds of interviews”, said Titan Industries CRM Manager Lakshminarayan.

A total of 154 candidates registered for the fair including 119 diploma holders and 35 degree holders in Engineering.

Besides Titan, Tractor and Farm Equipment Limited, ITI Limited, MESCOM, KIOCL Limited, BHAL/EDN, Kaynes Technologies, TVS Sundaram Motors and BASF India Limited participated in the fair.