FAISALABAD City News

‘Vocational skills being promoted to weed out poverty’
From Our Correspondent
FAISALABAD: Vocational skills are being promoted in collaboration with private sector to weed out poverty and unemployment from the country.
It was said by Punjab Vocational Training Council Managing Director Syed Naseer Khan during his visit to the Faisalabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry here on Saturday. He discussed various issues of mutual interests with FCCI president Rizwan Ashraf. He said that equipping our human resource with market driven skills was a challenge and would pave way for enhanced employability of the skilled workers. He also discussed the issues relating to quality of skilled workers. Similarly, he added, the skilled HR was also imperative to improve the quality of our exportable surplus in addition to increasing our production. He directed the officers of the PVTC to compile a comprehensive data of those students who had passed out from the vocational training institutes during the last five years with their trade wise placement or employability. It would help the FCCI office-bearers to give their feedback, he added. FCCI president Rizwan Ashraf said that our 50pc population was mainly comprised of youth upto the age of 30 years. With only investment of six months to one year, we could make them to earn respectable livelihood, he suggested. He said that industrial sector was facing problems in getting skilled workers for its various sections despite of hectic efforts of the Punjab Vocational Training Council and the Tevta. He said that Pakistani workers in other countries were remitting approximately 14 billion dollars per annum. Most of them were unskilled, he said and added that we could easily double these remittances by improving their skills and attitude. He suggested focusing on vocational training instead of spending billions of rupees on traditional education. FCCI SVP Nadeem Allahwala, Muzammil Sultan, Malik Rafique and other officers of the PVTC were also present.