By: Faheem Anwar
KARACHI: Madad Ali Sindhi, Caretaker Federal Minister for Education and Professional Training has said that there is a need to promote the Prime Minister’s Youth Skills Development Programme at the maximum level for the betterment of the country. He said this while addressing a certificate-awarding ceremony under the PMs Youth Skills Development Programme at the University of Lahore on Friday.
There was a great demand for skills at the global level and the complete focus should be on training youngsters with different skills, he added. The minister said that learning skills and acquiring education were the only solutions to all problems. He said that the country was blessed with everything adding that the utilization of money in an appropriate manner was needed. Madad Ali Sindhi emphasized enrollment of out-of-school children and added that he would make all possible efforts to put his department on the right track. He said he had visited Urumqi in China where students were asked about their area of interest after they completed their 10th standard. He said it was very unfortunate that in the last twenty years, no attention was paid to the development of public schools and added that if schools in Islamabad were in poor condition then what would be the condition of schools of other provinces. He said that efforts were being made to improve the condition of schools and work in this regard had been started from Islamabad. He further said there was a dire need to improve the standard of education. Focus should be on strengthening education as a lot of mistakes had been made in the past, he added. He said that when he took charge of his portfolio, he had decided to visit all his departments to see their working. He said he had visited different cities including Quetta, Hyderabad, Karachi, Jamshoro University and today he came to Lahore and it was good to see working of National Vocational and Technical Training Commission.
Earlier, National Vocational and Technical Training Commission Admin and Finance Director General Dr Khalid Mahmood said that skill training was all about transforming and becoming self dependent. He said that so far 90,000 students had completed their training in Punjab and in batch V, 56,000 students would be given training. He also congratulated students for completing their training successfully. He said the government was investing billion of rupees in youngsters so they should utilise the opportunity in the best way. National Vocational and Technical Training Commission Lahore Regional Office Director General Asfa Maqbool, University of Lahore BoG Chairman Awais Rauf also spoke. Later, the minister distributed certificates among those who had completed their training.
