Jamshedpur, Feb. 28: Alarmed over the acute shortage of skilled manpower in the manufacturing industry, Tata Steel is planning to launch technical courses to attract the youth.

In a recent move, the steel major has decided to run undergraduate programmes targeted specifically towards the steel industry.

“We are planning to run a four-year undergraduate course, tailor-made to cater to the steel industry and this would be done in association with IIT, Kharagpur,” said Amit Chatterjee, advisor to Tata Steel managing director, B. Muthuraman and chairman of the organising committee.

Sixty students would be selected in each batch for the proposed course. The company would also float Tata scholarships to the young engineers.

He spoke to newspersons after a dialogue with the institute, its employees and students on what’s preventing young minds from joining the steel industry.

Chatterjee, however, added that the idea behind the scholarships is not to lure young engineers but to build an understanding with them.

The steel major is also planning to advertise its pay packets.

“Our remuneration is on a par with any good IT company and youngsters need to know this,” he added.

“The Indian steel industry is going through a bad phase in terms of adequate and skilled manpower. For every metric tonne we need at least 500 engineers and 1,500 diploma holders. Therefore, unless drastic steps are taken we cannot come out of the crisis,” added Chatterjee.

The steel major is already running a post-graduate special programme at IIT for the those interested to join the industry.

“We have chosen IIT, Kharagpur, due to its geographical proximity to the iron and steel hub of Eastern India and the mining areas,” added the ace metallurgist.

The same growth model has also been implemented in China.

Earlier in the day, while addressing participants, he said: “The concept of steel making has changed and therefore institutes also have to up- date and modernise their syllabi.”

Father Casimir Raj, former director of XLRI, who addressed the audience during another session on human resource development also stressed on the need of coming up with remedies that would bring down the attrition rate among youths.