After Amma canteens comes ‘catch them young’

The Municipal Administration and Water Supply Department will throw open local bodies, TWAD Board and Metrowater to students for internship

September 22, 2014 09:18 am | Updated 09:18 am IST - CHENNAI:

After successfully implementing the concept of low-cost canteens (Amma Unavagam), the Municipal Administration and Water Supply (MAWS) Department has come up with another interesting initiative — ‘catch them young.’

Under an internship scheme, the Department will throw open municipal corporations, municipalities, town panchayats, the Tamil Nadu Water Supply Drainage Board and Chennai Metrowater  to students of various disciplines for internship.

A senior official says the programme will expose young and unemployed graduates to the urban sector. Those running various arms of the Department can tap into the services of the youth for tasks such as data collection and literature review. 

Another official indicates that the Department as a whole may benefit from the programme as the youth may produce new ideas and solutions to many old problems with which the authorities have been struggling for years.  

Among the areas likely to be covered under internship are urban poverty, sanitation, waste management, e-governance, human resources, municipal finance and accounts, town planning, civil engineering and architecture, energy efficiency and visual communication.  Graduates or postgraduates can apply for the scheme, which will be launched by the office of Commissioner of Municipal Administration (CMA) in October.

According to the CMA’s office, which oversees the functioning of 11 municipal corporations (excluding Chennai) and 124 municipalities, the duration of internship will be a minimum of two months and a maximum of six months. A monthly stipend of Rs. 10,000 will be given to each intern. Applications can be sent throughout the year. The CMA’s office has laid down eligibility criteria.  

Certain requirements may vary from one arm of the Department to another, a policymaker says, pointing out that the TWAD Board and Metrowater, essentially engineering bodies, may have different conditions.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.