ISLAMABAD, June 20: International Labour Organisation (ILO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Government of Pakistan here on Monday launched a $370,000 joint project to support the Prime Minister’s Programme for Vocational and Skills Training. Onder Yucer, the UNDP Resident Representative, Ahmad Jawad, Additional Secretary Economic Affairs Division, and Donglin Li, the ILO Country Representative signed the project at a ceremony here.

Minister of State for Finance Umar Ayub Khan, Advisor to the Prime Minister on Finance, Revenue and Economic Affairs Dr Salman Shah and Minister of State for Economic Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar were also present in the ceremony.

The project is aimed at promotion of employment and income generation and would focus on appropriate employment opportunities for the youth.

This programme is a preparatory assistance phase project that is expected to focus on around 80 training institutions across Pakistan. Under the prime minister’s programme, these institutions would train around 25,000 students in the first batch.

Another output of the preparatory phase would be to develop a full project document to provide assistance for the longer-term output of 300,000 trained young people.

This project is expected to contribute the UN’s overall assistance to Pakistan to achieve the Millennium Development Goals 1, 2, 3 and 8 on poverty eradication, primary education, gender equality and partnerships for development.

Speaking on the occasion, Onder Yucer said UNDP Pakistan was committed to the development of the youth of this country. “Under UNDP 2004-8 programme for Pakistan, we have placed great emphasis on bringing the concerns of urban and rural youth into the mainstream of development through training, skills development and job creation,” he added.

The project would work in partnership with the National Training Bureau, Ministry of Labour, Ministry of Education, provincial departments of labour and education, National Rural Support Programme and Provincial Rural Support Programmes.

In addition to the government and UN agencies, the project would also work closely with workers and employers organizations, community groups and NGOs.

The project would be implemented using the Training for Rural Economic Empowerment (TREE) methodology, which is a comprehensive training package that identifies and assesses local economic opportunities, designs and delivers community-based skills training, and provides post-training services.

The skills development programme would be closely linked to self-identified employment, income-generation and micro enterprise opportunities.

Mr Donglin LI observed that skill development, particularly for socially and economically disadvantaged target groups was most successful when used as a key component of an integrated employment generation and poverty reduction strategy.

As a result of around 20 years of experience, the ILO was implementing TREE in Pakistan to train a vast majority of rural and urban poor who were unable to generate sufficient income to achieve minimum living standards.