Daily Times

KARACHI: The officials of Sindh Board of Technical Education have vowed to set up an online information system for the technical board’s alumnae by the end of this month, Daily Times has learnt on Thursday.
The STBE’s officials have suggested the name of the information system as ‘Sindh Skills Information System’_ (SSIS) which would be working on the pattern of National Skills Information System (NSIS), Islamabad. The NSIS was established in 2015 under the National Technical Education and Vocational Training Policy. It was aimed to collect information about vocational and technical training institutes and its students across Pakistan under the supervision of National Vocational and Technical Training Commission.

However, alumnae of the technical and vocational centers in the various parts of the country didn’t utilize NSIS due to the communication barriers amongst the officials and students. “The skilled graduates, residing in the remote areas of the country, are unable to join the jobs which were offered to them via NSIS”, said Dr Masroor Ahmed Shiekh, Chairman of the SBTE, students of the technical and vocational training mostly belong to deprived families and they often need an urgent job to serve their families.
STBE’s administration feels the urgency of NSIS patterned information centre in Sindh therefore a step has been taken to establish such an advantageous information system for the Sindh’s technical board alumnae to help them out in seeking jobs. In the first phase, the required data of successful students will be uploaded into the computerized system and the graduates will be as well able to access STBE’s web portal to update their profile.

“The employers will also utilize the project of SSIS because they will be able choose graduates as per their requirements by one click searching”, he further added.

Apart from this, STBE offers admissions in sixty four various courses including 26 courses of diploma level and 38 courses of certificate level. “Around seventy thousand students have taken admissions in the training and vocational centers across Sindh”, said Rashid Aziz, Secretary STBE, every year around 70 percent students pass their examinations and qualify for certificate and diploma but how many of them are acquiring jobs, STBE has no record in this regards since long.

“SSIS will help out us in a research study about market demand that which type of courses should be taught to the students in the centers”, Aziz explained that officials of STBE are trying to minimize the gap between market demand and academia thus they have planned to establish its province information system for students.

He informed that four of the board employees from IT department have been assigned to work out on the project of SSIS which would be operational by the end of August.

It is pertinent to mention here that seventeen Employment Exchange Units are operational across Sindh including four units of Karachi’s region which were functionalized under the Sindh’s Labour Wing Department , but due the lack of funds those units are not performing so far despite that the Sindh government had deployed around 200 employees in those units.

Published in Daily Times, August 26^th 2017.