PRIME Minister Shaukat Aziz recently announced a plan to train 0.3 million educated youth in various skills, provide free education up to class X in federal schools, and to educate 0.8 million people under the Adult Literacy Programme.
All former prime ministers and presidents of the country made similar promises to the nation and Shaukat Aziz has spoken in a similar tone. However, he, like a good manager, has been cautious while discussing the figures. So, it is important to dig deep into his words in trying to decipher what they mean. Here we shall focus on vocational training for our youth.
There are 34.9 million unemployed persons in Pakistan and 56 per cent of the population is under the age of 18. Every year the number of students enrolling in high schools is over 1.7 million. While the number of unemployed people will remain over 34 million, Shaukat Aziz’s scheme will impart training to a mere 0.8 million. Out of the 10.4 million educated unemployed youth only 0.8 million will be offered training. Therefore, the plan announced by the prime minister will not change the situation of the unemployed or the educated unemployed persons. In this respect, a pertinent question that comes to mind is: How will the lucky 0.3 million youth get the training Shaukat Aziz has spoken about?
At present, there are 490 vocational training centres training 62,000 persons in commercial, vocational and polytechnic trades. This means nearly five times more students will have to be enrolled. For that to happen at least 2,300 more vocational, polytechnic and commercial centres will have to be opened. This alone would incur a huge cost compared to the existing expenditures. Currently, an average quality government vocational institute incurs an expenditure of Rs25,000 per student. Therefore, an additional grant of Rs7.5 billion will be required to achieve what the prime minister has promised.
Similarly, the number of trainers will also increase manifold and that would require more efforts. In the last three years, the number of vocational institutions has only risen at the rate of 20 per year and to achieve the target at the end of the promised year will need a massive endeavour of over 100 times than the present rate of increase of vocational centres. This again seems to be a far-fetched idea. However, this is not a problem of resources. The resources might well be there because the Education Sector Reform Programme was allocated an additional Rs3.5 billion in the 2002-03 budget, while the Education for All Programme is to be allocated a massive Rs450 billion in the next ten years, of which the government will contribute nearly half.
The gigantic effort required to increase the number of vocationally trained educated youth is a far-fetched goal. It is usually feared that a sudden change in priorities of the government may lead to mere shifting of resources from one public sector expenditure to another. It implies that while vocational training will be promoted, other areas of education may have to face cuts. As the Asian Development Bank notes in FY2003: “There was a discernible shift in expenditure from primary and secondary education to university and professional education. Expenditure on primary education declined by 4.4 per cent and that on secondary increased by only 4.1 per cent.” The bank notes that a large increase in expenditure on higher education (51.2 per cent) should not come at the expense of spending on primary and secondary education. This fear proved true when the final analysis showed that despite the promises, the education budget increased by a mere 7.2 per cent.
The tendency to shift resources from one head to another is a skill that Shaukat Aziz has demonstrated earlier as well. In 2003 when he was finance minister, out of the 12 pro-poor expenditures identified by him and the lending banks the total increase in final expenditure was only 10 per cent as compared to the previous year. While expenditure on rural development and family planning increased by over 120 per cent, there was a massive 29 per cent and 66 per cent reduction in water supply, sanitation, social security and welfare respectively.
So what Shaukat Aziz has promised will not improve the condition of the educated and uneducated unemployed people. Firstly, the target numbers fall far too short of the desired figure. Secondly, the massive effort needed to utilize resources seems to exceed the existing capacities and the rate of growth of the institutions involved. Thirdly, there is a greater danger that certain target areas may certainly not show the five-time growth figure, and instead a slight improvement may be witnessed.
