BAHAWALPUR - Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif on Thursday underlined the need for facing all challenges with courage and determination to make country self-reliant and progressive. He said that skills imparting programme will help the unemployed youth to become an earning hand and announced that the Punjab government will extend interest-free loan up to Rs50, 000 to skilled youth upon completion of vocational training under the programme.
Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif was addressing the inaugural ceremony of three-day Skills Fair for the deserving and qualified youth to provide them with vocational training and Craft Bazaar here in Bahawalpur.
Shahbaz Sharif appreciated the initiation of vocational training programme and said that this kind of skills imparting programmes would bring revolution in the country. This programme will help the youth get a respectable position and secure source of income for better livelihood so the youngsters and unemployed youth must get benefit from the programme,” the CM emphasised.
The chief minister urged the people to develop religious and traditional traditions of simplicity and adopt fair and legitimate ways for earning and prefer to live in a simple way for respectable life rather than looking for loans or other unfair means of corruption for lavish lifestyle. He claimed that the Punjab government had been following these steps to ensure self-reliance as it had shattered the ‘begging bowl’ and discontinued and rejected the practice of borrowing. Shahbaz Sharif pointed out that the vocational training programmes were the part of the government strategy to eliminate unemployment and generate more opportunities for self-help basis jobs to materialise the dream of national development. He further said that it was quite disappointing that energy crisis could not be overcome so far only due to wrong and negative policies of the people at the helm of affairs.
How it will be possible to attract investment in the energy sector when the rulers demand their share for allowing anybody to invest in the power sector? he questioned and added that the people concerned should review their policies in the national interest and allow the chances to succeed for the development of the country.
About 117 organisations had applied for the programme but only 31 organisations were allowed to impart vocational training to 17,000 individuals from Bahawalpur, Bahawalnagar, Lodhran and Muzaffargarh districts initially.
The participants will be imparted training in 68 trades of 17 different sectors including, Agriculture, Livestock, construction, IT, Handicrafts, Textiles and other services. A sum of Rs442 million had been awarded to the selected organisations to run the programme aims at vocational and skills training.
This programme is being launched by the Punjab Skills Development Fund, an amalgamation of 42 companies established by the Punjab government in collaboration with the Department for International Development, the United Kingdom.