Punjab Skills Development Fund (PSDF) would provide jobs to more than 400,000 youths after training in technical and vocational services during next five years.Speakers Farhan Shuja and Azka Munir said this while delivering their lecture at an awareness session in Multan Chamber, in which Sheikh Fazal Elahi, Vice President of MCCI was the chief guest.
They said the scheme officially began on January 1, 2016 and training was to be imparted by the industry and various educational institutions. Both females and males aged 18 years and above are eligible to apply for this scheme. In addition, with extended funding from the UK's Department for International Development, more than 8,500 individuals would be provided training in the previously selected 14 districts of the Punjab.
Contracts worth 529 million were awarded to a total of 85 TSPs for these schemes in a ceremony here. They further said the scheme was being launched with the aim of improving income generation opportunities for the poor and vulnerable populations across the Punjab by enabling quality skills development through promotion of a competitive skills training market.
They said PSDF had trained 150,000 people in 200 trades and it was working with 250 private and public sector training providers. Farhan Shuja said the government had announced to launch its new scheme, skills for Punjab Growth Strategy 2017 to fund training of more than 5,000 individuals in various employment-oriented trades.
Vice President of MCCI sheikh Fazal Elahi said PSDF was a ray hope for the jobless youths and they would be able to get job in abroad after getting training in different skills. Shamshad Jafari, Khurram Javed and Auranzeb Alamgir also attended the session.