Over the last five years, Pakistan’s economy grew at an average rate of 2.9pc per annum. This is far behind the South Asian growth rate of 4.6pc, resulting also in high unemployment compared with other countries in the region.

All sub sectors of our economy suffer from low productivity owing to the superficial knowledge base, lack of quality human resource and low quality standards. Agriculture, the largest employment-generating sector suffers from low crop yields, lower by 31pc, than that of scientifically managed farms in other countries. And manufacturing sector is less productive by 24pc Other sectors are not much different in terms of labour productivity.

Owing to the shortage of technical/vocational training institutions, an overwhelming majority of college graduates turn job seekers and the government is overburdened as a major job provider. Reason being, that there is a serious mismatch between the capabilities of college/school graduates and the industry’s requirement of knowledge-based skilled manpower.

The educational institutions are not imparting technical and motor skills.

Though other factors contribute in increasing per capita income, knowledge as an intervening variable for performance of different sectors of the economy cannot be ignored

According to the National Vocational & Technical Training Commission, (NAVTTC), there were 1647 technical/vocational training institutions operating in the public and private sectors in the country in 2013. Even if we rely on this figure, the number is quite insufficient for a population of 185 million people.

Malaysia has 4,316 technical/vocational training institutions for a population of 29.24 million in the public sector alone. Indonesia had 11,000 technical institutions for a population of 200 million in 2005. The exact number of the vocational training institutes is not known in Sri Lanka, but has taken a lead in South Asia by establishing a University of Vocational Technology back in 2009. Though other factors contribute in increasing per capita income, knowledge as an intervening variable for the economic sectors’ performance, cannot be ignored.

In 2012, the per capita income of Malaysia was $6764.51, Thailand $5480 and Sri Lanka $1884.23 against Pakistan’s $1,254. The common features of the three higher income countries are: investment in technical trainings, planned utilisation of trained human resource, and access to the international market with competitive goods and services.

Pakistan’s economy is heavily based on small enterprises; therefore at this stage, more technically trained people are needed than the sophisticated technological support, people who can operate and manage mechanical and electronically hybrid machines. However, with limited resources, the government will hardly be able to establish thousands of needed new technical/vocational training institutes all over the country in the immediate future. A feasible way out would be to set up vocational/technical institutes within the premises of the existing colleges all over the country. And the trade associations may be asked to establish technical institutes in their respective trade. There are about 10,000 colleges and hundreds of trade associations all over Pakistan that can do this job.

Presently our syllabus of secondary education and of intermediate are designed with an assumption that all the students will make their way to the professional colleges while only less than one per cent of the graduates are enrolled in the professional colleges while the rest of them either drop their study or opt for social sciences and humanities. They find very little opportunity to get into the industries and end up as clerks or untrained entrepreneurs.

The big chunk of these dropouts can be the potential customers of the technical/vocational training institutes and finally after graduating, they could make their way to the industries as knowledge based technical human resource.

In this reference, industries should be consulted by the technical boards for regularly updating their curriculum. Research based institutions including PIDE has already recommended that there should be a system under which technical college graduates must receive six months training in their relevant field in association with industry. It has also been recommended that there should be a culture of continuous and life-long learning so that the skills can be constantly improved and upgraded.

Dr Mustaghis-ur-Rahman is Professor of Management Sciences at SZABIST.

mustaghis@szabist.edu.pk

Published in Dawn, Economic & Business, May 19th, 2014