TVET conference: Tackle stigma attached with blue-collar jobs

Speakers at two-day moot emphasise need for enhancing skills of people to manage unemployment

ISLAMABAD: There is need to tackle the national stigma attached with blue-collar jobs. This can only be achieved if such jobs are given the respect they deserve.

This was stated by industrialists, vocational experts, and foreign delegates from over 15 countries at the first ever International Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Conference in Islamabad on Monday.

The two-day conference, organised by the National Vocational & Technical Training Commission, offered a platform to promote and exchange best practices, experiences and knowledge about TVET within the international and regional context for developing a better technical education) system in Pakistan.

“People have a mindset of becoming officers,” said Razzak Daud, a former federal minister and Chairman DESCON. He added there was a need to change the way people saw blue-collar jobs.



“There is a stigma and a lack of dignity attached to blue-collar jobs and uniform,” he said, adding that “To make the vocational and technical jobs a priority for students and their parents, we need to give them respect”.

Daud said that while the education sector was facing numerous challenges, the greatest of these challenges was to upgrade the vocational and technical education sector since there was an immense gap between demand and supply of trained technical staff.

“Millions of youngsters in this country are at a tender age, and if we don’t give them any training, jobs and a decent living, they would drift towards negative activities,” he said.

Parvez Ghias, CEO of Indus Motors Company seconded Daud stating there was an urgent need to tackle the national bias against technical and vocational education through sustained efforts.

NAVTTC Executive Director Zulfiqar Cheema said they had lost over than half a century without focusing on developing skills of the population. Earlier, State Minister for Education Balighur Rehman stated that skill development and technical trainings were keys  for socio-economic development.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 4^th, 2016.