“TEVTA and the garment city should collaborate in providing much-needed technical and vocational skills to the unemployed youth,” Sheikh said while speaking to a meeting at the garment city on Friday.
TEVTA has recently completed work on five buildings with huge investments, of which one is in Rawalpindi and the remaining four are in southern Punjab.
“We intend to hand over these buildings to the private sector to enable them to start their own tailor-made courses according to market needs. These structures could be leased for 10 to 15 years subject to their satisfactory performance,” he said.
Sheikh also expressed his willingness to ink a memorandum of understanding with the garment city in an attempt to provide jobs to TEVTA graduates.
Faisalabad Garment City Company Chairman Rehan Naseem Bharara spoke about the government’s strategy to create jobs by establishing three garment cities in Faisalabad, Lahore and Karachi.
The Faisalabad Garment City was the first project that started functioning in 2009. “We have completed its two blocks along with the administration block where 6,000 workers are employed including women,” he said.
“We are negotiating for acquiring funds for the second phase of the city, which will be leased to the SMEs.”
The city only needs machinery and could start units by plugging in, in an internationally compliant environment. Their products could be easily exported to developed countries without any conditions.
The garment city has a dedicated training centre. Work on the centre has been completed and now they need cooperation of TEVTA for the development of a laboratory and provision of technical facilities.
According to Bharara, two modern units that are already housed in the garment city are seeking skilled manpower. One of them has established a small in-house training centre and they are demanding more skilled manpower.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 22nd, 2014.
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