NAITA expands operations

More students, more courses:

Seeking ISO, productivity milestones:

By Ananda KANNANGARA

The National Apprentice and Industrial Training Authority (NAITA) will increase its present student trainee capacity to 40,000 during 2011. According to statistics, over 30,000 students between the ages of 16 and 35 are currently following numerous vocational training courses at 23 NAITA training centres islandwide.

NAITA, Deputy Chairman, Wijaya Wickramaratne told the Sunday Observer that the Ministry of Vocational and Technical Training has targeted over 100,000 new job opportunities during the coming months.

“Accordingly, our institute has to play a major role to fulfil this target by establishing additional vocational training centres and also by recruiting more persons for the new courses that are expected to start before the end of this year,” he said.

Wickramaratne, a B.Com graduate from the Peradeniya University with over 20 years experience in executive capacities at various public institutions, said when he commenced his duties at NAITA recently, he had one objective - bringing the institution to international standards by recruiting more school-leavers and school-dropouts for new vocational training courses.

“Our management, staff members and instructors at training centres are also focusing their attention towards the achieving of the ISO certificate and the National Productivity Award-2011,” he said.

Wijaya Wickramaratne	Jagath C.K. Basnayaka

He said if the efforts to obtain these two awards are successful, it will be the first occasion that NAITA has won such prestigious awards.

“We must work hard to achieve this goal”, he said.The Deputy Chairman said the NAITA, which was established in 1971 by the late Minister T.B. Subasinghe to help solve the unemployment problem among the younger generation in the country, has trained a large number of youngsters and also middle-aged persons during the past 30 years. “Most of them are employed in Sri Lanka as well as in other countries such as Australia, USA, Middle East, Canada and New Zealand,” he said.

Quoting statistics, the Deputy Chairman said the majority of students, especially those who are outside Colombo, prefer to follow courses in areas such as automobile, building construction, electrical, refrigeration, electronic and telecommunication, gem and jewellery, printing, rubber and plastic product manufacturing and hotel management and catering, considering the availability of jobs in large numbers at private sector establishments.

“All training courses are categorised according to the educational qualifications of the applicants,” he said.

“In addition to our general courses, today’s youth are keen to improve the knowledge of Information Technology (IT) and the ability to speak English,” Wickramaratne said.

“Therefore, we took a decision to expand training programs on IT and Spoken English in every district a few months ago”.

He said as a public sector institution, the NAITA provides low cost courses, considering the financial position of youth in the country.

He said many other vocational training institutions charge over Rs. 100,000 from students for various vocational training courses,but the course fees, charged by NAITA are affordable.

Job opportunities

The Deputy Chairman said many job opportunities will be available in the Northern and Eastern Provinces since the Government has already started to set up new industrial establishments, hotels and other development programs.

NAITA, Director Training, Jagath C.K. Basnayake said that school-leavers or any other person between the ages of 16 and 35 could apply for the training courses at NAITA any time of the year.

“When applications are forwarded to us, we call applicants for interviews and according to their educational qualifications they could select a course,” he said.

“First we give them industrial training and thereafter a basic theory course for three months, a special English course of 200 hours and an IT course of 30 hours.”

He said apprentices who have passed the trade test would receive a competency certificate which is accepted locally and internationally.

“In addition, the apprentices who have successfully completed training and have received certificates will also be provided entrepreneurship development training with a self-employment loan up to Rs. 250,000.

“Even middle-aged people could follow certain courses such as catering, cooking, motor mechanism, welding and electricity on the authorisation of the Chairman of the NAITA”, he said.

“During the training period we pay each trainee Rs. 1,000 per month as an allowance. They are also paid by the respective establishments during their training period.”

He said the NAITA also conducts training programs for nurses and paramedics, IT and foreign language courses, automobile engineering training courses in collaboration with private sector institutions.

Director Basnayaka said any person who is interested in vocational training courses could send their applications to NAITA, No. 971, Sri Jayawardanepura Mawatha, Welikada, Rajagiriya.