Paralkar after signing the deal. (Bishwarup Dutta)

Calcutta, April 25: The government today signed an agreement with Tata Motors as a result of which young men and women from displaced families in Singur would get vocational training.

Commerce and industries minister Nirupam Sen said 358 youths have been selected. This includes 17 ITI-trained youths who had qualified in the aptitude test conducted by the company and are now undergoing training in Jamshedpur.

There would be 122 others who cleared another test conducted by the Tatas. This batch will initially enroll for a four-month course at the Ramakrishna Mission Shilpa-mandir, Belur Math.

The others will be trained at ITI (Industrial Training Institute) Howrah, ITI Hooghly and ATI (Administrative Training Institute) Dasnagar.

“The company will set up a training institute in Singur for jobs in automobile and ancillary industries,” Sen said after the deal was signed.

The Singur institute is likely to come up in six months. The company said the centre would be similar to the ones it has in its Pune, Jamshedpur and Lucknow plants.

Over 2,500 candidates had registered at the WBIDC camp office in Singur seeking vocational training. Over 600 of them were women.

The training will be in two parts, a nine-month course for freshers and a six- month programme for those who have completed the Ramakrishna Mission course.

Successful candidates will then be trained at the Tata Motors plant.

M.B. Paralkar, the Tata Motors senior general manager, corporate HR and head of corporate social responsibility, and the department of technical education and training and the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation signed the agreement.

The minister was upbeat on the prospects of automobile industry-related education in the state. “A Canadian university has tied up with the Bengal Engineering and Science University for a course on automobile engineering,” he said.