IMD’s training institute to open doors to varsity students

PUNE: The National Meteorological Training Institute (NMTI) in Pune is working on a plan to extend its courses to degree-holders in science stream from universities and research institutes. The NMTI is run by the India Meteorological Department (IMD).

"Post-graduate science students from universities and institutes have shown keen interest in our meteorological training courses in the recent past. We have taken up this matter with our higher ups in Delhi," said Somenath Dutta, deputy director general for meteorology (training), IMD."The idea is to ensure that science graduates and post-graduates coming out of any affiliating system such as universities are allowed to join our regular training courses. This can happen in a phased manner, starting with one course and covering the remaining courses thereafter."

So far, the NMTI's acitivity has remained confined to training people from IMD and other government organisations that use the weather forecasting agency's services such as the defence services, civil aviation, satellite application and space research centres, maritime and hydrological services.

Besides, the NMTI trains foreign candidates nominated by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO). However, its training courses are not open for people from non-governmental institutions like universities and research institutes.

Dutta said, "We have been looking for recognition from various universities for our training courses. The Andhra University at Vishakhapatnam has recognised our one-year advanced meteorological training course as part of their M.Tech degree programme."

"The only condition put by the Andhra University is that after undertaking the course, the student concerned has to do a year-long scientific project under expert guidance," he added.

In the past, the NMTI had sought a similar recognition from the University of Pune, but the move failed to come through. "We exchanged a lot of correspondences in this regard, but things could not materialise owing to technical and administrative issues at the university end," said Dutta.

Apart from the year-long advanced meteorological course, the NMTI has been offering a six-month forecasters' training course and a four-month intermediate meteorological training course. The eligibility for these courses is science graduation with physics and mathematics as subjects.

Dutta said, "A new course in integrated basic meteorology, which will be of six-month duration, will commence soon for the scientific assistants being recruited by the IMD." The forecasting agency has set a recruitment target of 450 scientific assistants as part of the exercise to strengthen its manpower capacity.