Guru Nanak scholarships for Sikh and Hindu youths of Pakistan

AMRITSAR: Pakistan’s Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB) has begun the ‘Baba Guru Nanak Scholarship’ to provide vocational training to Hindu and Sikh youths to help them become independent after ETPB signed a MoU with Punjab Vocational Training Council (PVTC) the other day.

While talking to TOI after signing the MoU, ETPB chairman Aamer Ahamd said PVTC will train 10 Sikh and Hindu youth in the districts of Nankana Sahib and Rahim Yar Khan and the training would be provided in the existing vocational training institutes of PVTC”. He said while the PVTC would be responsible for providing vocational training to Sikh and Hindu youth on the other hand ETPB would bear the fee and stipend which turns around to be around Pakistani Rs 16 lakh for the 20 candidates.

Giving further details ETPB secretary Faraz Abbas said that the vocational training to the Sikh and Hindu youth was aimed at rehabilitation of underprivileged segments of society. He informed that EPTB would pay Rs6,000 towards the monthly tuition fee to PVTC and give Rs500 as a stipend to the students for a year's course.

“Religious minorities are mostly poor and are devoid of formal vocational training opportunities” said Faraz adding that there was a dire need to extend the formal training opportunities to Sikh and Hindu youth.

The MoU was signed by Aamer Ahmed and Major Shahnawaz Badar, chairman, PVTC, informed secretary, ETPB.

Notably, ETPB is a Pakistan government department established in 1960 with headquarters at Lahore to look after the evacuee properties left behind by Sikhs and Hindus who had migrated to India during the Indo Pak partition in 1947.

He further informed that PVTC was an autonomous corporate body of the Pakistan government and was working for the permanent rehabilitation of poor and underprivileged youth by imparting them demand driven skills.