ISLAMABAD, Nov 2: The ministry of science and technology will train 2,000 graduates and lawyers in legal data storage, using state-of-the art techniques.

An amount of Rs27 million will be spent on the project, said a press release issued here on Friday.

The project will be executed and supervised by Comsats Institute of Information Technology, Islamabad. The training will be offered in Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Quetta and Peshawar.

The purpose of the project is to provide a new set of IT services skill to young lawyers. It is envisaged that after the training they can be employed by companies involved in legal business.

The IT division has taken this initiative because at present, there is a shortage of trained manpower in different fields and at different levels of skills due to which IT companies are not able to get a sizable share of overseas projects.

The reason is that all IT projects are time specific and demand driven, and the local companies are not in a position to deliver the projects in time, mostly due to non-availability of trained manpower in the market.

Legal transcription companies are almost non-existent. Some companies have tried, but could not get projects due to lack of required trained manpower.

The training will be conducted separately for two different categories of people. In the first category, 100 young lawyers/graduates will be trained in Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Quetta and Peshawar as master trainers. In the second category, 1,900 lawyers/graduates will be trained in Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and Rawalpindi.

The training will be conducted in collaboration with the existing institutions and companies in the private sector that have adequate facilities.

Applications will be invited through newspapers for local/international institutes having expertise/infrastructure for legal transcription.