LAHORE, Oct 11: The federal government has given a target of producing one million skilled people to the National Vocational and Technical Education Commission (Navtec) during the next three years to minimise unemployment in the country.

In the first phase, the commission will give training to 5,000 people every year in 53 trades of the livestock sector and 113 trades of the services sector.

This was stated by Governor Khalid Maqbool while presiding over a meeting here at the Governor’s House on Wednesday.

The meeting considered recommendations by a special committee formed under Faisalabad Agriculture University vice-chancellor Dr Muhammad Bashir to suggest ways to overcome the shortage of trained workforce.

It was decided that evening classes for short courses in livestock and services sectors would be started from Nov 13. Initially, Faisalabad Agriculture University, Lahore’s University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Multan’s Bahauddin Zakriya University and Islamia University Bahawalpur would produce workers for fieldwork in the livestock sector.

Ten other public universities in the province would start three-month certificate courses in different sections of the services sector and nine-month to two-year diploma courses.

The participants of these short duration courses would be given a monthly stipend of Rs1,000 each by the Navtec.

The meeting was informed that a uniform syllabus and a training module for all short courses had been finalised in the working paper of the special committee.

The governor said promotion of skills held a central position in economic progress of any nation. Those Pakistanis who could not continue their formal education because of any reason must attain some position in society by learning skills of various sectors.

He said Pakistan’s annual progress was eight per cent. And in view of this the country needed to have an additional 1.4 million labour force every year.

“We should establish more and more technical training centres to turn millions of untrained labourers and unemployed matriculate youths into useful skilled workers.”