LAHORE: Technical Education and Vocational Training Authority (TEVTA) has started a need-based workers training to meet the local industry need which will resolve unemployment issue in the province and help in achieving the economic prosperity of country. These views were expressed by the experts in Jang Economic Session on ‘New initiatives for the promotion of technical education in Punjab’, here Tuesday. The panellists were TEVTA Chairman Irfan Qaiser, Dr Ali Sajid, Mehmood Ahmed, Dr Azhar Saleem, Muhammad Haroon and Rehmatullah Javeed while hosted by Sikandar Lodhi. Irfan Qaiser said TEVTA had designed stitching, bakers, auto-parts, and plastic manufacturing courses in accordance with industrial demand and international requirements. He said information technology education should be made mandatory in all courses. He said a job fair would be held for skilled people shortly in Lahore while in second leg road show would be held in Middle East states so that demand of Pakistani skilled workers could be increased there. He said for the first time external audit was introduced in TEVTA and infrastructure fund was being used for workers training. Dr Ali Sajid said that lack of planning was a major issue of Pakistan while there was a need to produce skilled labour for every sector to resolve unemployment issue. He said technical education curriculum should be amended in accordance with national qualification framework and international needs. He said almost no linkages existed between the industry and academia while effective policy was required for producing international standard workforce. Mehmood Ahmed said 10 percent of child population consisted of special children while in KP its ratio was 17 percent, so government should create special employment opportunities for them. He demanded the Punjab government to provide vocational and technical education for special children, increase facilities, organise special training workshops for them, provide them modern courses and certification in order to get respectful jobs. He said textile was important sector of Pakistan and skilled workforce should be produced for it. Dr Azhar Saleem said that skilled workforce was backbone of Pakistan. He said bringing the non-conventional education in the system was good effort but the quality should be focused rather than quantity. He said the role of TEVTA was positive and stressed the need to interlink various technical education institutions. He said equal technical education opportunities should be provided at district and tehsil level and connected it with job market. Muhammad Haroon said the Punjab government initiated serious steps for vocational training and technical education. He said skilled workforce could earn foreign exchange for country. He said link between the academia and industry could control employment generation. He called for agreement with China for vocational education. Rehmatullah Javeed said number of technicians should be increased for quality production and technical education should be expanded to achieve the purpose. He called for establishment of Human Resource centres on urgent basis.
