The Bhutanese Leading the way.
Students of Khuruthang Vocational Training Institute will have to exit for job markets after they are certified with National Certificate 2 (NC2) as per the labor ministry’s (MoLHR) Competency Base Training (CBT) which is being implemented in the Institute.
But the students are unhappy as they think this will deprive them of the NC3 certification before they exit for the job market.
“Usually Industrial tour and On Job Training (OJT) are what we are supposed to get after the NC2 level and now we won’t get that,” said one of the electrical students of Khuruthang VTI.
During the industrial tour, we get to see the factory equipments and can relate with the things we learnt. Now we won’t get to learn industrial wiring and motor wiring,” he added.
Other first year electrical students shared that with the limited time they will get to learn only till house wiring. As of now the students have learnt solar wiring, home appliances, module I and some basics while they are yet to learn Occupation Health and Strategy.
Many raised concerns that whatever they have been taught till now will be useless if they don’t learn industrial winding and motor winding. “Even a layman can do the house wiring,” said a student.
The VTI students feel it would be far more beneficial for them if they possess industrial and motor winding skills if they join projects and factories since house wiring is totally different from industrial wiring.
Some students passed the blame to the Rangjung VTI which provided one year course and now authorities seem to have wanted the same for Khuruthang Electrical students.
Cultural Counselor of Khuruthang VTI Lungten Zangpo said they received a letter from the MoLHR sometime in September which stated for students to exit for the job market after the completion of NC2.
He said, for the second year electrical students they have written to the labor ministry stating the nature of syllabus which needs more time to finish and also mentioned the importance of learning about transformers, motor winding, industrial and commercial winding and so on.
Ministry’s justification
Chief Human Resource Officer (HRO) under Department of Human Resources Karma said there are misconceptions among students and there is nothing to do with the reduction of the duration of course and in fact it is done based on the involvement of industries.
“While in the national competency training, students learned that the level 2 will be completed in the particular time adding for the NC2 it doesn’t mean they have to exit after one year and our curriculum itself determines that after NC2 they can exit,” the Chief HRO said.
“It is implied to all the courses where CBT is implemented.”
“After they are in the job market for the minimum duration they can reapply and continue with it,” he said.
The Chief HRO said maybe students referred to the earlier curriculum called ‘conventional curriculum’ when they said one year is not enough.
Except for electrical, plumbing and masonry CBT has not been implemented in the mechanical department. And in some courses, NC2 cannot be completed within one year and so duration needs to be extended.
The institute has 119 electrical students and 83 mechanical students.
CBT was implemented in August 2010. Other than Khuruthang VTI, the other VTIs are at Rangjung, Sershong and Chumey.
how about RIEE??