August 15, 2007	Wednesday	Sha’aban 1, 1428

KARACHI, Aug 14: A total of 6,500 workers will be trained in modern trades in Sindh under the Prime Minister Programme for Special Initiative to be launched in December this year.

The programme is aimed at training youths in fields where employment opportunities exist. These fields include building electricians, painters, steel fixers, mobile repair technicians, telecom technicians, computer programming, and farming skills, tractor driver-cum-mechanic to the people of the rural areas.

The training being launched by National Vocational Training and Education (Navtech) will be undertaken at 10 centres of the directorate of training and manpower as evening programmes apart from other institutions, like Sindh Directorate of Technical Education and Pakistan Institute of Training in Hotel Management (Pithom) organising training for jobs in hotel and tourist industry.

The training will be imparted to people in Karachi and other major interior towns, like Hyderabad, Thatta, Mirpurkhas, Sukkur, Larkana and Dadu.

The trainees will get a monthly stipend of 1,000 during the six months training along with a free of cost tool kit. The curriculum for training in 51 trades and vocations has been developed with the help of ILO.

The programme, which will continue for three years, is part of the government efforts to provide employment to the people. This is in line with the earlier programmes of National Internship Programme and President’s Rozgar Scheme.

The directorate of training and manpower has also designed a course for training of prisoners in Karachi, Hyderabad and Sukkur jails to help them earn a respectable living after their release.

The curriculum of training has been designed keeping in view the special mental frame of the prisoners, who mostly commit crimes on reasons based on socio economic factors.

In the first phase about 4,000 prisoners will be trained and they would be handled by an NGO after their release to help them get suitable jobs. The project has been designed on a concept taken from Irish rehabilitation centres and it has been sent to the Planning and Development (P&D) for funding.

Presently, prisoners getting rigorous imprisonment are trained on outdated looms (khuddy) for weaving cloth. Hence most of them fail to get any job in trades prevailing in the market after their release. When they fail to get a job and suffer from starvation they again tend towards committing a crime.

Under the rehabilitation project designed by the directorate of training and manpower the prisoners would be trained as electricians, painters, mobile phone repairing, computer programmers, surveyors, farmers and shuttering fixers, etc.

The directorate is also running three centres for training women in various trades. A new training centre for women will be opened at Yaqoubabad in Orangi. Women are mostly trained in computer programming and apparel designing but for housewives there are courses in cooking, repair of domestic appliances and art of applying mehandi for special occasions.