The City District Government Karachi (CDGK) in an unreasonable and mysterious way is imparting training to the candidates other than those 2,250 applicants who, after appearing in an aptitude test, had been selected by the its Call Centre Training Programme (CCTP).
According to well-placed sources, while the CDGK was carrying out the CCTP training in a mysterious manner, the genuine applicants were long awaiting the startup of the training by the city government.
They said that these students were waiting for their turn for the last five months, as the programme had halted soon after the completion of first batch of 750, out of 3000 students.
The CDGK started the programme with an objective of providing the skill and better employment opportunities to unemployed educated youths. Business Recorder learnt from some other sources that the Rs 120 million programme that started under the supervision of the CDGK's literacy group of offices was temporarily stopped, as the CDGK was facing shortage of funds.
They alleged that despite the schedule of the programme came to a halt, some students were getting the training as the second batch of the programme for which the government was bearing the expenses. Sources also said that the CDGK's literacy department, which is one of the most inactive departments at Civic Centre has failed to carry out the only programme CCTP, as it has long been working without appropriate numbers of administrative staff.
Sources further said that earlier, the literacy group had received applications from more than 11,000 candidates for the CCTP, of which 5,000 applicants appeared in the test and 3,000 out of them had been declared successful on August 19,2007. Successful candidates were supposed to be provided with six months specialised training for working at call centres. Training of first group of 750 students had begun on October 1. An agreement in this connection was signed between the CDGK and Shaheen Foundation.
They said that the programme was so successful that all most all the trained youths have now been employed in different organisations with salaries ranging between Rs 15,000 to 80,000 per months.
The remaining three batches were anxiously waiting for their turn of training. But these youths were living in sheer frustration as the starting of training has been delayed and the CDGK's recent move to sideline them has put them in a state of complete uncertainty. Though the Governor Sindh, Dr Ishratul Ebad had recently distributed the certificates among the pass out students, who had completed the six-month CCTP, the youths enrolled in second batch were anxiously waiting to obtain the certificates of experience that could bring them fortunes for a better job opportunity.
Moreover, the Nazim, CDGK, Mustafa Kamal too, had showed his willingness to give opportunities of such training to the rest of the poor and unemployed students, as the city government was spending Rs 1, 000 per month and Rs 60, 000 on each student during the training. When contacted, the Executive District Officer (EDO) of the CDGK's literacy department was not available for a comment over the issue.