The Hindu Business Line : Sandvik Asia establishes training academy for rock drilling activities

Talking to presspersons after the inauguration of the academy, Mr Hans C. Gass, Managing Director and President of Sandvik Asia, said the academy has been put in place with the aim to train upcoming electrical and mechanical diploma holders in the art of servicing, operating and maintaining various rock drilling, excavation, hauling and crushing equipment introduced by Sandvik Mining and Construction (SMC) product companies such as Tamrock, Voest and Alpine.

He pointed out that these equipment were used in open cast and underground mines in the country as also in large infrastructure projects on road building, tunnelling, hydroelectricity, railways and construction.

Mr Gass noted that as these graduates were put on the job immediately they were unable to handle machine-related problems. Currently, four such training academies are in place in Johannesburg, Zambia, India and Australia. Four more are planned in South America, which is expected to be in place during the next calendar year. These would be in Peru, Argentina, Chile and Brazil.

Requests have also come in for training from the South East Asian countries especially the Philippines, he said.

Mr Johan Pieters, Technical Training Manager, Region Africa/Global, who was also present on the occasion said the training academy, started in Africa in 2001 has, so far trained about 2,200 people, of which 1,900 came from South Africa. He said currently out of the 321apprentices, 21 were from India.

Mr Sanjay Basu, director of the programme, said the training envisages a two-year open-ended programme for fresh diploma holders in mechanical and electrical engineering. Fifty per cent of the time would be devoted to practical training while the rest would be utilised for theory.

The training areas would cover technology-specific area in the first year such as electro hydraulics, electronics, mechanics - transmission-brakes, while the second year would be for machine-specific training, specialising in one of the three - surface, underground and rock processing equipment to begin with.

Mr Gass said about seven cadets had taken the training as the first batch and was confident that the second batch, starting next week, would be able to cater to 40 cadets.

He said the company was hopeful of recruiting most of the cadets passing out of the academy, while noting that they had the option to move out if they so desired.

He said the entire expenditure for the training was being borne by the company and noted that the cadets also got a stipend during the training programme.

He added that the infrastructure cost was to the tune of Rs 1 crore.

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