IT education does not meet market needs: Alvi

Pakistan is ready to jump on the bandwagon to exhibit its potential in the technology sector, said President Arif Alvi on Friday.

At the launching ceremony of a working paper, titled ‘Energising the Tech Investment Ecosystem in Pakistan’, the president said: “There is so much vibrancy around. While we think we have lost some of the time, I hope we are still ready to jump on the bandwagon and show the world what we are like.”

The president reiterated his call for promoting virtual education, adding that it was cost effective and could lead to an increase in student enrollments.

“The country has not yet adopted the required tools, though some of the progress has been achieved by experimenting with online education during the Covid-19 pandemic,” he said.

He lamented that out of 30,000 IT graduates produced in the country, around 25,000 remained jobless because “their education did not match market needs”.

The former prime minister of Japan had assured the government that Tokyo would employ 100,000 IT graduates from Pakistan but “unfortunately the country did not have quality graduates”, he pointed out.

He was of the view that IT graduates should not move abroad for employment rather they should earn by working remotely, as the country would lose investment in them because of their relocation.

Being the chancellor of many universities, the president said that he was instructing the institutions to invest in human resources.

He said that Virtual University of Pakistan had increased its enrolment to 40,000 without requiring any additional campus, just because of adopting modern tools.

He revealed that the government had removed the obstacles pointed out by Silicon Valley experts as well as Amazon sellers, which made a great impact.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 2^nd, 2021.

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