KARACHI, June 14: Sindh minister for planning and development Shoaib Bokhari on Saturday called for giving good quality training to workers to enable them to meet the future challenges.

Speaking at a seminar on Public-Private Partnership in Technical-Vocational Education and Training, organized jointly by the ILO and the Skill Development Council, he said workers and industrialists should get proper training in their relative fields so that the quality of products could be improved in this competitive environment.

The government, he said, was studying the Industrial Relations Ordinance (IRO) 2002 and hopefully soon it would be formulated in such a way that it was in favour of a majority of the people and not in favour of just one stakeholder, be it workers, industrialists or anyone else.

He also urged the workers and employers not to take a strict stand but to have a tolerance and try to accommodate the point of view of others as well so that a peaceful coexistence could be ensured, which was necessary for progress and improvement in economy of the country.

Earlier, SDC’s Ahsanullah Khan, giving a brief resume of his organization, said thousands of people have been trained in different trades at the SDC in the past five to six years.

He said unlike other training and vocational training centres, which had a fixed curriculum and offered certain courses, the SDC always tailored the courses according to the demand from the market, due to which its graduates did not face difficulties in getting employment.

He said that the government did not consider recommendations given by the Workers Employers Bilateral Council of Pakistan (WEBCOP) while formulating the IRO 2002. He urged the government to start a dialogue with the stake holders — workers and employers — so that IRO 2002 could be made according to their wishes.

He said that a new (sales tax related) condition has been imposed in the budget due to which sales of over 40 industrial sectors has stopped, while no such condition had been imposed on importers dealing in these sectors, so their sales have increased and the local industry had suffered.

Dr Basharat Ahmad of the ILO said the ILO always stressed on a trained workforce so that the productivity and quality of the workers increased. He said that ILO had always assisted in establishing many technical and vocational training institutes all over the country.

Earlier, a labour leader, Kaniz Fatima, highlighted the issue of harassment at workplace and demanded that a gender sensitised environment be created so that women workers could also work in a congenial surroundings.

Mir Mohammad Ali, Khalil-ur-Rehman and others also spoke.