President speaks about advantages of digital technology

President Arif Alvi has stated that digital technology can help benefit the country in various sectors, especially by empowering the women in social sector and imparting education through quality learning from distance.

Speaking at the inaugural plenary of the 22nd sustainable development conference titled 'Sustainable Development in a Digital Society,' he termed the human resource as one of the biggest challenges to the country and deplored that universities are not producing employable graduates.

Alvifurther said that of the 26,000 graduates produced by the universities, only 6,000 are employable and remaining 20,000 are not employable. "We need to improve the quality of teaching in the best interest of the country and for development of human resource as well," he added.

He said, "There is a gap between the requirement of market and what we are producing that needs to be bridged in the education sector by imparting the relevant skills to the students."

He also emphasized that ethical barriers are also needed to be taken care of to avert negative aspects of the technology. Alvi added that the disparity between the rich and poor increased and new technology has increased it further.

There are positive and negative aspects as digital technology's benefits in health sector are tremendous with ability to develop new drugs. He said that digital technology can be used for the benefit of the society as overall but it also entails negative impacts as well.

He said that Pakistan is faced with it to improve its financial inclusion of women and deprived people. With an aim to empower women, through BISP program money is given to the poorest of the poor to help them and lift them out of the poverty.

He added that through digital platform, money can be sent through digital system to the women and their ability to open and operate an account would help empower women and bring them up. There are huge possibilities of digital system in the agriculture, commerce, trade and education. The question is how the country can get benefit from the digital technology.

Speaking on the occasion, Special Assistant on Social Protection and Poverty Alleviation Dr Sania Nishtar said the most important wealth of the country is development of its human resource.

She said the world is shifting in terms of development and the government's Ehsaas Program resonates with the spirit of sustainable development goals framework. She said it is the ambitious program of development initiated by the government. She said industrial revolution has increased the demand of skilled human resource.