Guwahati, June 3: Confused about the stream you should opt for once you clear your secondary board exams? Now students in Assam have a toll-free helpline to guide them and they can get cracking with their careers.

The State-Level Advisory Committee (SLAC) for Students and Youth Welfare, Assam, has taken the initiative to launch Sarathi, a 12-hour helpline for career information and guidance for students in the state.

The toll-free helpline (18003453768) will be open for use from 8am to 8pm everyday. It will also provide information about eligibility criteria and norms for admissions to various institutions and universities, scholarship options and job-oriented/skill development programmes.

Hyderabad-based Nirmaan Organisation has lent technical help to the project, which is sponsored by Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd as part of its corporate social responsibility. Telecom major BSNL (Assam telecom circle) is also supporting the project.

Chief minister Tarun Gogoi launched the helpline here this afternoon.

'The helpline will help disseminate information among the students regarding career options, competitive examinations and employment avenues. Our endeavour has always been on guiding students to choose careers that suit them best. In fact, the state government is contemplating introducing career counselling as part of the curricula in all schools of Assam,' Gogoi said at the inaugural function.

The chief minister said the fact that 51,046 students have secured first division in this year's HSLC exam proves that there is a vast resource pool that needs to be guided the right way.

'Through this helpline we seek to do that. Apart from the conventional options, today there are so many others that students can choose from,' Gogoi said.

Debabrata Saikia, member secretary, SLAC for Students and Youth Welfare, said: 'Four minutes will be provided per call and we intend to cater to anything between 50,000 and 80,000 calls this year. We will distribute pamphlets on the helpline among the 4,000-odd government schools in the state as part of an awareness programme.'

The SLAC, which is under the sports and youth welfare department, last year carried out a career counselling drive among government schools in 23 districts.

'This year, we will extend the drive to 45 subdivisions. We intend to cover all the schools in the state and counsel the students,' Saikia, the legislator from Nazira, said.

The project comprises three parts - technology, counselling and monitoring, from a control centre in Hyderabad.

'The Sarathi project has five full-time staff at a call centre here who are supported by three persons from the centre in Hyderabad. By the end of this month, we will have four more people here,' chief executive officer of Nirmaan Organisation, Chandra Sekhar Putchakayala, told The Telegraph.

Nirmaan was formed in 2005 by a group of engineers from Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani.

'We are the expert partners with 50 full-time staff and 700 volunteers across the country. In Assam, we plan to integrate career counselling into the curriculum of students through outreach programmes and workshops. Besides, we plan to train teachers to become career counsellors so that the guidance starts from the ninth and tenth standards itself,' Chandra Sekhar said.