Digital skills are a critical part of ensuring decent work for young people in low-income countries. They allow workers to navigate a rapidly evolving economy, create quality jobs, and spark innovation. More digital skills required for youth employment in Pakistan.
The world needs more young people who have these skills to thrive and build societies. This is why the Digital Skills for Decent Jobs Campaign promotes investment in young people’s digital skills development.
Digital Hunar Program
The Government of Pakistan realizes the importance of digital skills for youth employment. This is especially true for a country with one of the biggest youth bulges in the world. Its universities and colleges turn out around 500,000 graduates every year but some of them are unemployable.
This situation is particularly worrisome for the poor who are more likely to become unemployed and lose their income if they don’t get jobs in the first place. This is why the Prime Minister’s Youth Skill Development Program (PMYSDP) is a vital part of the government’s strategy to address this issue.
PMYSDP is a comprehensive program that provides training in conventional and high-tech skills for job placement in the job market. It is design to improve the quality of education and training programs to ensure that they match international standards and provide job opportunities for youth in a number of sectors.
PITB and the Higher Education Department (HED) Punjab, along with the Planning & Development Board (P&D) and the Pakistan Software Houses Association for IT and ITeS, have jointly launched the Digital Hunar Program to help youth acquire digital skills and gain employment in the country’s growing IT sector. The event held at Arfa Software Technology Park attended by the Punjab IT Minister, Dr. Arslan Khalid, HED Provincial Minister Raja Yassir Humayun Sarfraz, PITB DG e-Governance Sajid Latif, Vice Chancellor of Rawalpindi Women University Dr. Anila Kamal, and several other stakeholders in the IT industry.
At the consultation session and design workshop, it highlighted that at least 20,000 jobs will create by the Digital Hunar Program across Punjab to benefit freshers and young students. This initiative is an important component of PITB’s ‘Taleem Aur Hunar Sath Sath’ drive, which aims to empower the youth and build awareness about making efforts to foster both skills and education.
The consultation session and design workshop also attended by various representatives from the IT industry, academia, and the public. It aimed at developing a roadmap for the Digital Hunar 2.0 initiative. The Punjab IT Minister emphasized that the initiative is crucial to the future of the province, as it would help create a strong foundation for Pakistan’s economy and enhance the country’s job market.
NRSP
Digital skills are essential for youth employment in Pakistan. With the rapid digitization of the economy and society, there is an unprecedented opportunity to improve job outcomes for youth. While on-the-job training and training related Active Labor Market Programs (ALMPs) can play an important role in strengthening the skills of existing employees, well designed Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) programs needed to build skills for new entrants into the labor market.
Digital entrepreneurship is a promising area of activity to address youth unemployment in Pakistan and it can do in many ways, including through public and private sector investment. The National Rural Support Programme (NRSP) is an example of a successful entrepreneurship program that targets youth in poor, rural communities.
NRSP trains rural youth in the areas of entrepreneurship and employable skills, with an emphasis on digital skills. They provided with full accommodation at the nearest city center, allowing them to concentrate fully on their training. Moreover, the program gives equal opportunities to women.
For Sheeraz, a 28-year-old from Chak 143 Murad in Punjab, the NRSP is providing him a new way of earning. He has recently trained in digital marketing, social media management and e-commerce. Sheeraz is now able to earn money online and is confident about his future success.
Another NRSP project, the Youth Employment Program, provides free training to young people on freelancing and other digital skills, such as graphic design and website development. Around 50 students accepted for each training and their academic profiles are divided into technical and non-technical groups.
The technical group made up of people with IT academic backgrounds and they are train in graphic design, web development and digital content writing. The non-technical group made up of young people who have diverse but interdependent skills and they taught in digital marketing and e-commerce.
With the rapid digitization of the economy and the rise in online retail sales, digital skills are becoming an essential part of the labor force. According to estimates, online e-commerce is growing by more than 16 percent and will account for one-in-four transactions in 2020.
PPAF
PPAF provides digital skills training to youth through the National Rural Support Program (NRSP) and other community-based organizations. These skills provide opportunities for youth to earn income from home and help them to find sustainable employment.
Moreover, these skills also help them to access government services that they may not otherwise have been able to afford. This is an important step in helping to overcome the poverty crisis and increase economic growth and development.
Another benefit of the PPAF is its capacity to support communities to become more active in their own development. Through its partnership with community institutions, PPAF builds their capacity to take ownership of socio-economic development priorities and empowers them to interface with local governments. This strengthens their institutions and helps to achieve a better quality of life in the communities that they serve.
In the same way, PPAF works with community resource persons to train them in the areas of leadership, entrepreneurship, and social mobilization. These community members act as bridges between the partners and communities and play a vital role in developing local community institutions.
This also ensures that the impacts of a project sustained well beyond its lifetime. PPAF believes that investing in community institutions is a high return investment as it strengthens their capacity to become active and knowledgeable citizens in their own right and has the potential for profound and long-lasting change in their lives.
PPAF also promotes youth entrepreneurship through training programs. These programs are design to equip the youth with knowledge about business planning, management, and marketing. These skills can be use to start a small business that will help to support their families and community.
Young people are also a great source of innovation and creativity. They have the ability to come up with new ideas that can help to solve problems and provide benefits for society at large.
Among other things, this includes using digital technology to eliminate poverty and improve education. This is why digital skills are so important for young people in Pakistan. This is why the NRSP and PPAF are so focus on helping youth gain these skills in order to improve their chances of finding work.
Parwaaz
A new multi-stakeholder approach is taking flight with a number of pilot projects underway. Its core pillars are lifelong learning and upskilling, future-readiness and youth employability, and innovative skills funding models.
A broader vision for digital skills requires an integrated national push. This should harmonise the government’s digital initiatives, skills development and youth entrepreneurship to weave a coherent national vision that is cross-cutting and integrated.
The young population of Pakistan offers a demographic dividend for the country, but only if it is harness to leverage its full potential. The youth bulge projected to increase over the next several decades and presents a time-bound window of opportunity, but not without urgent policy responses.
To make this potential a reality, Pakistan must invest in digital skills for all its citizens, and ensure that they are equally disperse across gender, geography and class boundaries. It will also need to ensure that internet penetration is increase in all parts of the country, especially in areas like Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan.
Moreover, a strong education system should be design to equip students with the necessary foundational skills that they need for success in an increasingly technological world. It should also train students to become entrepreneurs and start their own businesses, so that they can graduate as job-creators rather than job-seekers.
For all this to happen, it is essential that a country like Pakistan has a strong, accessible and high-quality educational system in place. This will ensure that the country can build a workforce of skilled professionals for its business sector, which will benefit the economy and the people of Pakistan in the long run.
This can be done by improving access to quality education, reducing the cost of tertiary education and introducing career pathways for students. The same should done for vocational training programs and adult literacy programmes to ensure that the youth are well-equipped with the skills required in a changing labour market.
While a large percentage of the population in Pakistan is below the age of 30 and a significant proportion is unemployed, there are many reasons for this. The country’s aging population is a key challenge, as are a shortage of skilled workers. However, the young population is an enormous source of energy and ideas for the country, if given the right opportunities.
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