Daily Times

KARACHI: The Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan is all geared up to launch a five-year Enterprise Resource Planning System and Training project to train and support 100,000 youth in the field of Information Technology (IT).

According to the HEC, the prime objective of the project is to provide employability skill set training to 100,000 youth in the field of IT to make them skilled enough to avail job opportunities available in the market. “This initiative aimed towards promoting outreach of young graduates to the technologies that will improve their technical skill set and competence in order to qualify for employment opportunities available in the market”.

The HEC said these proposed trainees will be engaged to equip themselves with most demanding IT certifications. The foundations of a knowledge economy will be laid through the investment in the determinants of national competitiveness, especially skill development, information and communication technologies, and engagement according to international market trends. Innovation, technology adoption and value addition will be encouraged.

The Government of Pakistan has announced Vision 2025 based on the imperatives of embracing change and transformation, and to create new opportunities based on our innate strengths. The first priority is to provide every citizen the ability to improve his/her choices and quality of life. This requires capitalizing upon and strengthening existing social capital, improving the human skill base of the population, and providing access to opportunities for advancement. Policy aims at improvement of competitiveness of national human resource.

HEC has been entrusted for the execution and implementation of this scheme. Through this Expression of Interest HEC intends to explore the possibility of selection of various technologies along with the certification timeline and costing from the bidders to shortlist. For the purpose, HEC has invited Expression of Interest (EOI) from the interested bidders/ organizations (national/ international) who can propose various certifications in latest technology based on global demand as well as timeline of certification and financial requirement for these training.

In the Budget 2017-18, the government of Pakistan has allocated more than Rs 35 billion for old and new projects of HEC. The federal government has allocated Rs 500 million for the Establishment of Enterprise Resource Planning System and IT training for 100,000 youth project while Rs 200 million have been allocated for modernization and up gradation of labs in engineering universities.

Published in Daily Times, January 17^th 2018.