LAHORE: The Punjab Information and Technology Board (PITB) has trained a total of 31,503 youths for online freelancing under Chief Minister E-Rozgar Program.
A PITB official informed Profit that the CM-E-Rozgar Program was launched by the previous government and was aimed at providing training and career opportunities, necessary resources to earn respectable employment to young professionals.
The official further informed that the program was aimed at providing training opportunities to the youth for self-employment using internet-based freelancing. The program also aimed to teach young people the key soft skills and train them on career development and sustainable income, as well as empower them to bring in foreign exchange and bring freelancing up to international standards.
He added that to achieve all these objectives the PC-I of the said program was initially approved at a cost of RS 547.47 million with the gestation period from Feb 2017-18 and then was revised with a cost RS 870 million with a gestation period Jan 2019 to June 2020. However, the program also got a one year time extension till June 2021 without any change in scope.
According to the documents available with Profit, the expenditures incurred against the approved cost were RS 769.7 million that counts for 85 percent of the project approved cost.
However, later a sub agency of the planning and development department also assessed the said program and an electronic survey (using Google Form) with proportionate sampling was used to gather information from the training participants.
The findings of the beneficiary survey depicted that the training of E-Rozgar was well received by the trained youth but the overall results demonstrated that the program was successful in establishment of 41 training centers and trained 31,503 youth against the target of 25,000 youth.
According to the survey the training was likely to have a positive influence on the trained youth as the majority of them perceived short-term, medium term and long term outcomes of the training and were satisfied with the quality, overall environment, amenities and staff cooperation during the training.
Similarly, the actual monthly income of an average trained youth was approx. RS 23,000 as concluded from survey and majority of the participants i.e., 43 percent planned it as part time and 35 percent planned this career as full time.
The survey report further stated that 94 percent participants rated the training to be highly relevant to their work and it was pertinent to mention that the age group between 24 to 29 developed 47 percent of the profiles after participating in the E-Rozgar training.
