The government is firmly committed to providing skills training to at least 100,000 people by the end of 2007 and one million people by 2010 to bridge the growing skills gap in Pakistan, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said. While reviewing progress of National Vocational and Technical Education Commission (NAVTEC), he said that skills gap is expected to grow even more in view of the availability of increasing job opportunities commensurate with the momentum of country s economic growth and the challenge is to scale up the efforts to prepare the people for employments both inside the country and abroad. He said the training being provided by the government is of short duration, demand driven and need-based. The Prime Minister emphasized the need to enhance the training capacity of the existing training institutes. He said more training projects should also be launched on the public-private partnership basis. Aziz said that NAVTEC is an apex body for formulating policy and providing support and regulatory framework. Its role is that of a catalyst and the implementation of the programmes i.e. imparting training is to be carried out by the provinces. He said NEVTEC should give priority to Sindh and Balochistan while enhancing the capacity of training institutions.
