NCHMCT Gets A Taste Of Hamla Hospitality

Jyoti Koul, New Delhi

After the successful 'Incredible India' campaign, the Ministry of Tourism now plans to focus on infrastructure and human resource development (HRD). The additional director general, ministry of tourism and CEO, National Council for Hotel Management and Catering Technology (NCHMCT) Rashmi Verma has taken special initiatives for the development of human resources in the hospitality and tourism sectors. The ministry's budget for HRD will be approximately Rs 55 crore, which is much higher than the allocation last year.

In order to facilitate the industry further, Verma is focussing on providing training to the National Council students. In keeping with this thought a reciprocal programme with INS Hamla has been started.

"Two years ago we took the initiative to train their staff through our tie-up with INS Hamla Naval Academy. We ran a special programme for the naval cadets, which was very successful and we now plan to have a reciprocal programme this year. This programme will see the Naval Academy train our students especially for the cruise liners at some of our selected institutes in costal areas," revealed Verma.

The decision was taken on account of the fact that students do not have many options when it comes to training themselves for the cruise liner industry. Many students opt for some short-term courses from the private institutions that charge exorbitant fees.

"With the help of INS Hamla, we will start similar training courses especially in those institutes which are near the sea such as Goa, Triruvananthapuram and Chennai to begin with. We will run short-term courses for the students who wish to enrol in the various other courses," she added.

Facilitating the students further, the Council will for the first time (beginning last year), start counselling instead of interviews to make the admission process more transparent. "From this year onwards we plan to de-centralise counselling. Earlier it was centralised and conducted only in Delhi, however, this year we have divided it into four zones namely, Delhi (North zone), Mumbai (Western zone), Calcutta (East zone) and Chennai (South zone)". This counselling system will not only help students but the parents as well as this move will help them to save time and cut down unnecessary expenses. As a result the number of students applying for the course has increased considerably from 14,000 to 18,000. The council is also making efforts to increase the seat capacity at its institutes to accommodate the rising number of candidates.