No part-time jobs, internships this summer vacation

However, this year, the virus threat and subsequent lockdown have taken a toll on such part-time jobs. The unorganised sector, which provides such jobs to students, itself is shut. The development also hampered those students who were planning to do their internship with MSMEs (Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises) or MNCs (multi-national companies).

“The unorganised sector, mainly textile shops, restaurants, browsing centres, job typing units, mobile phone stores and electrical shops, normally helps students earn between Rs 3,000 and Rs 5,000 during summer vacation, pointed out Tamil Nadu Siru Thozhil Federation secretary S Muthurajan.

PK Shivakumar (20), a third-year automobile engineering student at a government college, said during his second-year vacation he worked in a vehicle spare parts company at Guindy Industrial Estate.

“The money I earned helped me purchase a bag, shoes, and lab experimental kits before the reopening of my college. However, due to the lockdown, I could not get any job this year,” he rued.

S Raghavan, who represents TN MSMEs Federation, said the pandemic has dashed the hopes of thousands of students, especially in colleges. “In Tamil Nadu, many companies located in industrial estates like Guindy, Ambattur, Ranipet, Hosur, and Krishnagiri, besides organisations in export processing zones, provide more than one lakh part-time jobs and internships for students. These companies also get back to these students with job offers after their studies if they had performed well during this period,” he said.

S Kalpana, a final-year MBA student in a private college at Chennai, said the internship programme is a must for her campus placement. “However, till date, I was not able to find a company which could provide me an internship,” she added.

Kalpana pointed out that despite the University Grants Commission’s new guidelines to allow students to take up online internships, many companies were not keen on offering such an assignment through digital mode.

“Though several students have now started independently approaching us, we expressed our inability to help them as our organisation had issued a circular to stop giving intern jobs with effect from April till further orders,” said K Shangavi, an HR consultant with a leading recruitment agency and employment firm in the city.