PESHAWAR: KP Caretaker Minister for Revenue, Industries, Commerce and Technical Education Adnan Jalil expressed disappoint over stoppage of funds and salaries of the employees of TEVTA (Technical Education and Vocational Training Authority) for the past several months.
He assured that he would make sincere efforts for earliest release of funds and salaries of the staff. However, he clarified that instead of becoming a burden on the public exchequer, TEVTA has to become a profitable and self-sustaining entity which depended on the hard work of its own staff, he added.
He was addressing a briefing on TEVTA’s performance at Civil Secretariat Peshawar. On this occasion, the TEVTA managing director, Prof Abdul Ghaffar, told that 106 technical education and vocational training centers are working across the province under TEVTA, wherein thousands of male and female students are equipped with technical education and training every year.
Appreciating TEVTA’s overall performance and role, the caretaker minister said that the bright future of a nation is also linked with the technical education, and many nations have reached the climax of prosperity and development by paying attention to it. However, he said, organizations like TEVTA could only emerge triumphant when its outcomes and benefits outweigh the cost incurred on it. But unfortunately, he reminded, the wheel of development is turning upside down here too like so many other sectors. He deplored that TEVTA was rightly expected to guarantee jobs to its outgoing youth as per market demand, but situation will be quite different if it starts collecting the employment data of its students in the relevant fields, as many of its youth and their parents are suffering from their unemployment.
Adnan Jalil said that an institution can only move forward whose teaching and administrative staff is proved cost effective but here expenditures of TEVTA staff surged from two to three billion rupees but the results and benefits are meager or almost non-existent. He directed that the staff of TEVTA should work on a realistic basis, bring back the personnel working in officers’ homes to the offices and field while the existing staff and surplus pool employees should be engaged instead of recruiting new or additional staff.
The caretaker minister further said that better results are expected if public institutions, including that of technical education, are run on the basis of public-private partnership. In the same way, he said, instead of running the technical education and vocational training institutions in a unilateral traditional manner, the outgoing students can get guaranteed jobs if courses are evolved with the consultation and demand of the business, industrialist community and the concerned chambers of commerce are taken onboard too. Henceforth he directed that the TEVTA authorities should prepare training courses according to the local industry, trade and economic needs and requirements, wherein information technology should be prioritized.
TEVTA high ups assured the minister of improvement in the performance and outcomes of the organization and seriously implementing the directives of the caretaker minister in this regard.
