LAHORE - The best way to prevent frustrated and jobless youth falling prey into hands of terrorists is to impart them with vocational and technical training for helping them get jobs in various sectors of the industry, said NAVTTC Executive Director Zulfiqar Ahmad Cheema at press briefing yesterday, says a press release.
Zulfiqar Cheema, said 65 per cent of the educated and hardworking youth of the country are a "double-edged weapon". Unemployment, poverty and frustration can push our youth to the crime. Cheema said vocational training is the only effective tool for poverty reduction.
He said Job Placement Centers have been set up to make data of the skilled manpower available to the industry. The NAVTTC is already in touch with the industry and is receiving their demands which would help it making the curriculum and a strategy to train the youth in marketable skills.
He said Sector Skill Councils have also been established to ensure a proactive role of industry. Urging the media to help remove the stigma attached with blue-collar jobs, he said the skilled labour could become a big source of earnings both for their families and for the country in form of remittances. He said NAVTTC would also train the youth in various trades and fields keeping in view requirements of the international market where they could get jobs and remit the money back home.
"We have a lot of demand in different fields from many countries of middle east and Europe, and we will train our youth as per market demand," he added. He said that NAVTTC would follow Germany and Sri Lanka as role models in technical training.
Vocational training to the youth is pivotal for economic and social development of the country, he added.
He said Pakistan's human capital, particularly the youth, has great potential which is yet to be tapped. Skill development is the only way to overcome poverty alleviation and by prioritizing technical and vocational skills "we can make our youth useful and productive citizens of the country."
He said the NAVTTC is an apex body at the national level mandated to regulate and framing the policies and providing directions to all stakeholders of Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) sector in the country.
He said the NAVTTC is already holding skill competitions and would hold job fairs in all the provincial capitals and Islamabad.
"We want to gather industrialists, trainees and trainers, at one place, under one roof at Expo Centre Lahore in national Skill Show. He said the NAVTTC is establishing Skill Counseling Desks across the country for the guidance of youth.
Cheema said under the TVET Reform Support Program, which is funded by the EU, Netherlands, Germany and Norway, the NAVTTC had devised TVET policy and National Vocational Qualifications Framework(NVQF) policy to bring a paradigm shift in TVET delivery.
For the first time in Pakistan, he said, a Competency Based Training (CBT) programme has been launched in 97 institutes with expected 20,000 pass-outs.
Chairman TEVTA Irfan Qasir Sheikh said TEVTA is training more then 100000 boys and girls every year and the figure would go up to one million. Both the heads of NEVTTC and TEVTA said that trainees would get interest free loan to run their own business.
Head of Higher Education and Skills, British council, Sarah Pervez said that British council is supporting NEVTTC and TEVTA in improving the quality of technical and vocational training by utilizing UK experience and expertise in Skills development.