'E-Rozgaar Programme starts yielding results'

LAHORE: The e-Rozgaar Programme, a joint project of Youth Affairs, Sports, Archaeology and Tourism and Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB), is scaling up rapidly to train the graduates for online freelancing in Pakistan, and it has now started contributing to the national exchequer.

This was observed by PITB Chairman Dr Umar Saif during a meeting held to review the progress of the project. The meeting was informed that centres in 21 districts of Punjab had already been established. The centres enrolled 2,700 students, and 1,694 of them have been graduated. The top 15 percent students have already earned US $ 112,000 through online freelancing, and a student, Faaiz Zulqurnain, has made US $ 7,000 to date in the shortest span of time. The e-Rozgaar has partnered with Facebook, incorporating its training into e-Rozgaar’s curriculum. Through Facebook course track, e-Rozgaar is educating trainees by sharing tools, knowledge, tutorials and basic skills which eventually help them become expert developers. Facebook provides free vouchers to the master trainers to become Blueprint certified. On clearing the learning path, the candidates receive Facebook certification apart from the certification received from the e-Rozgaar Programme.

Other than Facebook course track, Facebook Developer Circles and PITB have also come together since the beginning of January 2018. The developer circles have been established under the supervision of e-Rozgaar Programme in three cities, i.e. Gujrat, Sahiwal and Faisalabad and it is expected to expand to three more cities in future. The e-Rozgaar has also partnered up with CrossOver to produce high end freelancers.