ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunication, Syed Amin Ul Haque Monday said that equipping the youth with digital skills is the need of the hour.
Haque was addressing the signing ceremony of an agreement between Ignite and Virtual University of Pakistan for Launch of DigiSkills 2 Programme here.
The agreement was signed by CEO Ignite Asim Shehryar Husain and Rector Virtual University of Pakistan Arshad Saleem Bhatti.
He said Pakistan is the 4th fastest growing country in terms of freelancers and their earnings in the world. He said youth are our assets and Ministry of IT & Telecom is taking steps for the development of youth.
The government is striving hard to extend full support to the freelancers in ease of doing business, bank account opening, bringing foreign remittances to Pakistan and availability of seamless internet connectivity across the country, he added.
Federal Minister appreciated the DigiSkills results, saying that DigiSkills has played a commendable role in equipping emerging and existing freelancers with knowledge, skills, tools and techniques necessary to seize the opportunities available internationally in online freelancing market places.
About IT exports, Federal Minister Syed Amin Ul Haque said that strong measures are being taken to increase IT exports. He said that empowerment of women is important motto of Ministry of IT.
IT Minister also gave directions for the completion of all projects in transparent manner and on time. Speaking on the occasion, Secretary IT Dr. Sohail Rajput said that after the success of the first phase of DigiSkills, the second phase will prove an important milestone.
Rector Virtual University Dr. Arshad Saleem Bhatti said that in the second phase, DigiSkills is targeting to impart 1,500,000 trainings over the period of two years.
Speaking on the occasion, CEO Ignite stated that inclusion of 5 new courses and upgradation/renewal of existing 10 courses will equip the freelancers with knowledge necessary to seize the opportunities available on global freelancing marketplaces and with the direct clients as well.
It is worth mentioning here that, Digiskills is Pakistan’s premiere online training program that has already imparted 2.2 million free of cost trainings in freelancing skills.
During the first phase DigiSkills got total enrollments of 2,232,801 from more than 300 cities of Pakistan and from abroad. Out of which 74 percent (1,653,400) were male and 26 percent (579,281) were female.
Most of these trainees were Pakistani youth (70 percent) and majority (60 percent) of these were students who completed Intermediate or Bachelors.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021