Shafqat Mahmood Inaugurates CoE in Modern Technologies at NAVTTC

Federal Minister for Education and Professional Training, Shafqat Mahmood inaugurated on Friday the Center of Excellence (CoE) in Modern Technologies at the National Vocational and Technical Training Commission (NAVTTC), Islamabad.

The center will provide training of Chief Master Trainers and Master Trainers, who would then train youth in modern employable technologies. This will further pave the way toward allowing the Pakistani technical and vocational education and training (TVET) sector to sustainably improve the delivery of training and assessment, career counseling, and job placement.

Addressing the inaugural ceremony, the Minister emphasized the need for setting up more centers of excellence to provide state-of-the-art cutting-edge technology training to the youth. This is a high demand internationally and in the industry, he underlined.
The Minister said the government accorded top priority to the TVET sector and had provided Rs. 10 billion under the Kamyab Jawan Program. He said the government continued to give a high priority to skills training, especially in artificial intelligence, robotics, cyber security, etc.

He informed the audience that the government had given NAVTTC a target to produce one million skilled youth workforce, and the availability of such big skilled labor would cause a massive improvement in the jobs market and industry.

“The government is focusing on bringing reforms in the TVET sector to bring the technical and vocational training in line with the requirements of the marketplace in order to prepare the workforce with accreditation from international bodies,” he concluded.

Chairman NAVTTC, Syed Javed Hasan, shared that NAVTTC was working hand-in-hand with its training partners for enhancing the quality of the TVET sector. He said NAVTTC so far successfully trained 74,736 youth in 150 Hi-Tech and 100 conventional technologies with 71 percent employment. Another batch of 63,000 youth are being given skill training through 989 Training partners and reputed universities.

95 percent of youth have expressed satisfaction over the quality of the training by NAVTTC. He mentioned that the Skills for All Strategy of government is working as a catalyst for imparting quality training among youth.

Executive Director NAVTTC, Sajid Baloch, assured that NAVTTC was fully committed to providing quality training, and thanked the donors.