LAHORE: Availability of skilled workforce is an issue that has plagued Pakistan since the start of the century. We need rudimentary skills to engage workers in low paid jobs; we need higher skills to scale up our industries on modern lines.
Federal and provincial vocational institutions operate with numerous handicaps that include upgrading the training equipment at least once in five years.
In the 21st century, the machines become outdated in five years.
Institutes hardly manage their routine affairs from the allocated budget. They need additional resources to procure equipment that helps trainees find a better job.
It has been observed that any new vocational institute in the first three years creates a lot of jobs for its trained students.
But by the fifth year, the attraction of training on old machines wanes as jobs are not easy to get by.
There are numerous vocational training centers in the country that are imparting training on 20-25 years old equipment. Trainees rolling out from these centers do not find jobs in industries that can take them up in career.
They get engaged at low salaries mostly in the non-documented small industries or self-employ themselves in their neighborhood. Since the unemployment rate in the country is very high even institutes with obsolete equipment attract students.
This at least assures them of some livelihood. But the mainstream industries remain starved of required skills.
This is the reason industrialisation has stagnated in our country.
In fact, the weight of manufacturing has constantly been on decline in the last two decades.
Only the existing industries that arrange in-house training for their workers expand their capacities.
The two largest technical and vocational institutions in Pakistan are Technical Educational and Vocational Training Authority Punjab (TEVTA) and Punjab Vocational Training Council (PVTC).
The PVTC was established in October 1998 based on public private partnership by the government of the Punjab. The TEVTA was established in 1999 through an Ordinance (XXIV of 1999) by merging training institutes from seven different departments of the government of Punjab, as a special institution, technical educational and vocational training institute.
These two institutions rolled out over 100,000 skill-trained workers in 2017-18 by operating in two shifts.
The funding model of both is different. TEVTA is fully funded by the Punjab government and the PVTC operates on money provided through provincial zakat funds. There is no other funding available except that the expenses of PVTC head office are borne by the Punjab government.
Students in TEVTA pay a monthly fee (suspended during Covid-19). The students in PVTC are poor and cannot bear the teaching expenses.
Zakat fund provided Rs6,000 per student out of which 500 is the stipend of the student and the rest goes to the particular institute where he/she is admitted. Training and all administrative expenses including teachers’ salary are managed through this zakat contribution.
In case of lower distribution of zakat, the number of students goes down. In 2021-22 for instance only 33,000 students were trained against one shift capacity of 60,000 as funds were not available.
PVTC Chairman Maj Shahnawaz Badar (retd) said the funding constraints were depriving the children of the poorest segments of society to come out of poverty. Poverty cannot be addressed with such lopsided policies.