Rawalpindi, (Parliament Times) : A recent report by National Human Development of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) highlights the disappointing situation in Pakistan with regard to the promotion and focus of technical education which demands us to wake up. The report says that there are only 3798 technical training institutes in Pakistan having capacity to train barely half a million students annually against the demand of manifolds of this number.
This was revealed by Khalid Nawaz, chief executive Officer, Knight Human Management (KHM) SHALAAN Pakistan, an organization that protects the rights and employment of overseas Pakistanis while speaking at a training session of students at the KHM office on Thursday.
“Pakistan is one of the worst performers in terms of technical and vocational education and training (TVET) and it should use an effective development and implementation strategy for TVET to harness its young potential”, he quoted the report as saying above. He said owing to preferring general higher education to technical and vocational education coupled with lack of TVET institutes in the country, an annual increase in youth unemployment is estimated at 1.5 million.
Khalid Nawaz said that specialized and sophisticated skills are required for most jobs in and abroad. “We are in the dire need of having new state-of-the-art TVET institutes all over the country in urban as well as in rural areas if we want to rise to the occasion”, he mentioned. He pointed out some problems including dearth of government funding for TVET institutes, very low participation of women, shortage of good trainers, hindering and obstacles on the part of government in establishing private TVET institutes and asked the authorities concerned to address these problems.
He further added that just like Masterminds of KHM have started corporate training courses to produce professional tax advisors in view of the need of the country and have also facilitated the creation of skilled manpower related to modern IT skills in the School of Arts and Design, there is an urgent need to expand these facilities to all urban and rural areas of the country. Khalid said that developed economies like Norway, Finland and Switzerland have transformed their economies by focusing on TVET and they lead the world in terms of technological advancement and workforce development, Pakistan should learn a lesson from these leading economies.
“By upgrading and establishing new TVET institutes, we can transform our youth into a skilled workforce within two to three years’ time space who will not only help in eliminating unemployment by getting decent jobs at home and abroad but they will also be helpful to strengthen country’s economy. He demanded the government of taking steps forward in this behalf and it should encourage private sector to invest in this direction which could change the destiny of the country within three to four years. He also suggested that government should also keep in view the modern requirements and one or two subjects must be included in the new curriculum of uniform national education policy which would attract students from primary to upper level towards technical and vocational skills and provide base of advancement in this direction.