As summer temperatures spike in Chennai, air-conditioner technicians are working overtime, with households and businesses scrambling to install, repair and service cooling systems.
All major service providers note that they are struggling to meet the spurt in demand.
That wheels in a question: is the market being fed with a steady pool of trained AC technicians?
Sundaresan Ranganathan, director, Tamilnadu Advanced Technical Training Institute (TATTI), a registered organisation, says the Tamil Nadu Industrial Training Institute started offering a two-year programme in Mechanical Refrigeration and AC in 1985 but the course was discontinued during the pandemic due to poor intake.
Scaled-down versions of the same programme are being offered now, one with a three-month duration, and the other six months, but both struggle to inject sufficient trained technicians into the talent pool.
Polytechnic colleges and service providers have been adapting to attract and retain students and skilled technicians but they have been facing many obstacles.
Ramakrishna Mission Polytechnic College in Mylapore, managed by Ramakrishna Mission Students’ Home, runs a free residential diploma programme, affiliated to Directorate of Technical Education. At the end of every semester, the college management offers additional training for their students with its training partners, refrigeration and AC course being one of them.
M. Sugumaran, principal of the College, says students are more drawn towards the automobile and manufacturing sector, followed by product design and as developers in the technology sector.
“Diploma students are not so keen on being a technician, preferring to enter the field in supervisory roles for the three-year programme they studied,” says Sugumaran. He says unlike in the past students there have many other alternative courses that show equal, it not greater promise, so becoming a HVAC technician has lost its charm.
Many such institutions admitted students who completed Class X or Class XII; or even dropouts.
According to a report by Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) titled ‘Formalising Air Conditioner Technician Training and Certification in India for Climate- resilient Servicing’, the demand for skilled room air-conditioner technicians will rise to around 2 million by 2036-37.
The servicing sector can play a significant role in helping deal with refrigerant overuse for servicing, and bring operational energy-efficiency closer to the designed benchmarks.
For a ready pool of trained technicians, the curriculum offered at most ITI institutions needs a revision. The report says that content must be co-created with industry participation and updated periodically to respond to changes on account of the refrigerant and technology transitions
In addition to technical training, focus should also be on imparting entrepreneurial and soft skills such as communication and interpersonal skills. Offering social security to informal AC technicians are among other ways to draw people to the HVAC field.
Role of service providers
From incentives to career opportunities, major service providers are adopting different strategies to retain qualified talent.
Hitachi Engineering Excellence Centre runs training programmes to upskill AC technicians with the latest in the field. Its monthly training programmes conducted at SRM Easwari Engineering College in Ramapuram has employees from its 60-plus franchise partners in Tamil Nadu taking part in it.
Besides a skill development centre that Bluestar operates in Ambattur, it runs a training programme on wheels that goes to the doorsteps of the dealers to train technicians in the latest technologies.