Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani on Tuesday called for coordinated efforts for skill development and scaling up of training programmes to help provide jobs to the unemployed.
Chairing a meeting of Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) where he was given a briefing on Skill Development and Youth Employment here at the PM House, Gilani directed to put an end to overlapping of activities of different government departments to run programmes in a cost-effective and efficient manner.
The meeting directed that the training programmes take into consideration the demands of the industry so as to absorb skilled people in the labour market both domestically and overseas. BISP Chairperson Farzana Raja said that 150,000 youth will be given technical training under the Waseela-e-Haq and Waseela-e-Rozgar schemes.
The main feature of Waseela-e-Haq and Waseela-e-Rozgar are to impart training to 150,000 young people both, men and women, through government and private institutions so as to get them out of the vicious poverty circle. Executive Director NAVTEC, Tariq Shafi Chak, said NAVTEC has so far trained 125,000 young people in various technical fields. He said five new schemes of training programmes were underway which will train 50,000 people for which the PM has allocated Rs 250 millions.
Those who attended the meeting included Advisor to PM on Finance, Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, Minister for Professional and Technical Training, Mian Riaz Hussain Pirzada, Deputy Chairman Planning Commission, Dr Nadeem ul Haq, Secretaries of BISP, Ministry of Finance, Planning and Development Division, Human Resource Development, Executive Director NAVTEC, CEO PPAF, Chairman Nadra and other senior government officials.