Bengal expects IT jobs to grow

The information technology (IT) department of the West Bengal government has targeted employment of 4.5 lakh personnel by 2010.

The number at present is just 24,000. It is expected to touch 60,000 next year.

"There are around 210 companies in the sector of which 165 are purely IT companies while 35 are ITeS companies which employ 24,000 people," explained Manabendra Mukherjee, West Bengal minister for IT while inaugurating the 18th International Conference on VLSI Design and 4th International Conference on Embedded Systems.

The minister also said that the state government was also trying to develop West Bengal as a hardware base.

"This would be possible if the manpower pool in the state in used meaningfully. The quality of human resources in the state was also good enough for the hardware sector to develop," he added.

The minister also mooted the idea of setting up academic institutions for specialised streams of IT hardware where the government would act as a facilitator by providing infrastructure and other resources.

"The institutions would have to take the initiative of bringing together the required talent pool and the faculty in order to make it a success. They would also have to come forward by making available equipment and gadgets required for laboratories," he added.

"We would act as a facilitator so that the industry and the academia can come together but a little bit of initiative also needs to be taken by the industry itself to make these a success," the minister said.