Software and training giant NIIT will open a new front in the battle against the millennium bug by opening a training school in south-eastern England.
NIIT is making ambitious plans to start crash courses for hundreds of pupils at its new training school which will open outside Maidstone about 100 miles from London.
The company has already hired buildings and is now recruiting teachers for the school.
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It will start in the next few weeks if plans go according to schedule.
NIIT will initially focus on training programmes to tackle the Millennium Bug as the countdown begins to 2000 AD.
Once that is up and running the company will also begin training the thousands of programmers who will be needed as European Monetary Union gets under way in a number of countries.
The European Monetary Union introduction is expected to create a mountain of re-programming work in the next few years as countries switch from using francs and marks to the new currency.
Indian companies have already picked up giant contracts worldwide to rewrite programmes to counter the millennium bug.
However, most companies are getting the work done by battalions of newly-hired programmers in India.
A British computer software company the FI Group has recently announced that it is buying a major stake in IIS Infotech an Indian company which has considerable expertise in millennium bug work.
The FI Group here has said that IIS Infotech will carry out much of its work on the millennium bug.
But NIIT is taking a completely different approach which will set it apart from other computer companies.
The company has said it will hire teachers locally for the new school and will keep Indian personnel to an absolute minimum.
NIIT says there is no shortage at all of experienced programmers inGreat Britain who can be rapidly trained to work on the millennium bug.