Varanasi (UP), May 27 (IANS): The Varanasi administration has asked the government as well as private Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) to begin efforts at a war-footing to prepare a batch of at least 100 skilled technicians who can handle advanced medical equipment needed in Covid treatment.

These include oxygen plants, concentrators, ventilators as well as advanced medical equipment at hospitals that need maintenance and repair.

This will also open new job opportunities in this sector.

District Magistrate Kaushal Raj Sharma said: "I have assigned the task to the ITI principal, who is also the nodal officer for skill development programme in the district, to ensure that government and private institutes prepare a batch of 75 and 25 skilled technicians, respectively, by giving them training in repair and maintenance of oxygen plants, concentrators, oxygen supply pipelines in hospitals, ventilators, high flow nasal cannula and other advanced medical equipment."

He explained that the number of such machines has increased manifold within a period of 45 days.

Even the company which has installed most of the oxygen plants in this period has only one engineer to tackle technical issues in Varanasi and surrounding region. The ITI principal will finalize the structure of training programme after which state government's approval will be sought to run it. The training will be conducted in seven modules, in which all the newly installed medical equipment and oxygen plants will be covered," he said.

The ITI principal will invite applications for the first batch of 100 aspirants, who will be given training for a month after which they will be engaged at government hospitals and other establishments.

It is expected that most of the trained technicians in the first batch will be absorbed in government hospitals while others will also get job opportunities as freelancer as demand for them in private hospitals and companies is also going to increase massively."

Sharma said that a total of 17 government hospitals are getting equipped with 20 oxygen plants. "Private hospitals are also being mobilized to install their own plants to end dependency on cylinders. The industrial plants for refilling medical oxygen cylinders are also increasing," he stated.

"We now have 488 ventilators in government hospitals. The number of oxygen concentrators in government hospitals has gone up to 220 while 400 more are coming. Also, 150 are available in private hospitals. Hence new avenues for jobs in this sector will come up," he said.