Improving worker skills

Minister of State for Finance Umar Ayub Khan said last Thursday that Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz would soon announce a new vocational training and skill enhancement programme. This, of course, is reflective of the realisation that human resource development has to be a vital component of any meaningful strategy for economic progress. As a matter of fact, governments in this country started paying attention to this important need in the early 1990s, establishing a Skill Development Council and a Technical Education and Vocational Training Authority (TEVTA). As the minister noted, already 150,000 workers are being imparted training in various technical institutions on an annual basis.
The Prime Minister now plans to double this figure. The need for such programmes cannot be overemphasised. As it is, a majority of our workforce neither has basic education nor any kind of skill training. People become plumbers, carpenters, electricians, mechanics, machine operators, gardeners, tailors etc without systematic learning with the result that despite hard work and talent they fail to deliver the best results in their chosen vocations. Hence, even when such people get job opportunities in various Middle Eastern states they remain grossly underpaid.
As a matter of fact, human resource development programames are essential for the health of our manufacturing sector as well. For it is a well-known fact that educated/trained workers tend to produce better quality of products. Which is why even in a highly developed country like the US worker education and skill enhancement remain a constant governmental concern.
Vigilance is maintained on a regular basis so that the country is not left behind in the stiff competition its industries face from other producers such as Japan.
For a country like Pakistan, where the manufacturing sector - though it has started to post appreciable growth figures - remains at a nascent stage, it is all the more important for the government to pay special attention to the need of enhancing worker skills and education.
In the coming days, as the globalisation process picks up steam, the demand for trained workers is going to increase further. Already 'outsourcing' is the new buzzword as more and more developed countries are turning to low-cost markets for manufacturing different components of products that range from garments to airplanes.
Those who get employed for such manufacturing jobs have to have necessary skills as well as proper education to be able to read design drawings. Such jobs, needless to say, require precision rather than approximation that, unfortunately, characterises the work methodology of our untrained workforce. The government has embarked on the right course in deciding to expand various skill training programmes. But it needs to do more.
There is an urgent need not only to expand training programmes but also to increase the present literacy levels. According to official claims, the literacy rate is a little under 40 percent; but as per the UNESCO recommended functional literacy standards it is less than half that figure. There is no point, therefore, in making claims that do not mean much in practical terms. The Government must put in place schemes that are aimed at furthering literacy rates in real terms.
For long, it has used the excuse of economic constraints not to do the needful on this crucial front. But that excuse is not valid anymore, given that the government leaders repeatedly boast about having turned around the economy, and the donor countries are more eager than ever before - for reasons of self-interest - to promote the cause of education in this country.