PESHAWAR: While expressing grave concern over the stoppage of funds and salaries of the employees of TEVTA (Technical Education and Vocational Training Authority) for the past several months, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Caretaker Minister for Revenue, Industries, Commerce and Technical Education Adnan Jalil has assured that he would make sincere efforts for the earliest release of funds and the salaries of the staff.

However, he clarified that instead of becoming a burden on the public exchequer, TEVTA has to become a profitable and self-sustaining entity which depended on the hard work of its own staff, he added. He was addressing a briefing on TEVTA’s performance at Civil Secretariat Peshawar. On this occasion, the TEVTA managing director, Prof Abdul Ghaffar, told that 106 technical education and vocational training centres are working across the province under TEVTA, wherein thousands of male and female students are equipped with technical education and training every year.

Appreciating TEVTA’s overall performance and role, the caretaker minister said that the bright future of a nation is also linked with technical education, and many nations have reached the climax of prosperity and development by paying attention to it.

However, he said, organizations like TEVTA could only emerge triumphant when its outcomes and benefits outweigh the cost incurred on it. But unfortunately, he reminded, the wheel of development is turning upside down here too like so many other sectors.

The minister deplored that TEVTA was rightly expected to guarantee jobs to its outgoing youth as per market demand, but the situation will be quite different if it starts collecting the employment data of its students in the relevant fields, as many of its youth and their parents are suffering from their unemployment.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023