Varanasi: As the second wave of Covid-19 pandemic has led to a massive rise in the number of oxygen plants, concentrators, ventilators as well as advanced medical equipment at hospitals, the challenge of their maintenance and repair has also gone up, thereby opening up immense job opportunities in this sector. In view of the unavailability of skilled hands, the district 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 by training them for the job in a month. Talking to TOI on Wednesday, 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 of repair and maintenance of oxygen plants, concentrators, oxygen supply pipelines in hospitals, ventilators, high flow nasal cannula and other advanced medical equipment.” “These number of such machines has increased manifold within a period of 45 days,” he said adding, “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 finalise the structure of training programme after which state government’s approval will be sought to run it very soon. The training will be conducted in seven modules, in which all the newly installed medical equipment and oxygen plants will be covered,” he told TOI on Wednesday. “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 establishments for experience,” he said adding, “it is expected that most of the trained technicians in the first batch will be consumed 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.” The district administration records indicate that only in a period of 45 days, five oxygen plants have been installed wile installation process for 15 others is in progress in government hospitals of the district. The DM said that a total of 17 government hospitals are getting equipped with 20 oxygen plants. “Private hospitals are also being mobilised to install their own plants to end dependency on cylinders. The industrial plants for refilling medical oxygen cylinders are also increasing. With the arrival of oxygen plants, auxiliary work like laying its pipelines has also increased massively,” the DM added. “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,” he said adding, “apart from these, advanced medical equipment like HFNC and others have also increased massively, which has created new avenues. The job opportunities will increase in this sector as not only Varanasi, but almost all districts are faced with this situation.”