IT created 250,000 jobs in last 2 years’
ISLAMABAD, June 05 2006: Awais Leghari, Information Technology (IT) minister, on May 04 said Pakistan’s IT sector created about 250,000 jobs within the past two years. Addressing the annual prize distribution ceremony of Ghazali College for Women Islamabad, he said the local IT industry required an additional 8,000 to 10,000 workforce every month. He deplored that demand for qualified workforce was not being met efficiently because of a lack of quality education at the top level.
He called for strengthening links between industry and academia to pave way for the production of top quality human resource that formed the core of a knowledge-based economy. “We no longer live in the industrialization age … it is the information age and any country that does not build a knowledge-based economy would fail to make headway into the next information age,” he said.
The minister said no developed country could afford to have undeveloped human resource. “Everything now revolves around people and if their potential can be harnessed well, nobody can stop them from attaining a position of eminence in the polity of nations,” he said. He said Pakistan’s success in the telecom sector had established the fact that with right kind of policies and patronage at the highest political level, any sector could produce miraculous turnarounds.
“IT thrives on the quality human resource and the government is working aggressively in collaboration with universities to produce top-notch graduates in IT and telecommunication,” he said. He said his ministry had planned to launch an outreach scholarship programme worth over Rs 250 million to select talented college students from remote and underdeveloped areas and train them at boot camps before their admission to universities in the country.
“Up to 200 students who are admitted to IT and telecom disciplines by these universities, would be offered fully funded scholarships to complete their degrees in a congenial and competitive academic atmosphere,” he said. He said the ministry had also developed an internship programme for the country’s IT industry to offer internship to 10,000 IT graduates who would be offered six-month internship each at a leading IT company for which they would be paid Rs 6,000 monthly stipend. He said the internship project was being launched in the backdrop of an acute shortage of high-end IT professionals within the IT industry that needed 8,000 such professionals for the next year alone.
Source: Daily Times
Date:6/5/2006
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