ISLAMABAD: Punjab province’s e-Rozgaar online job scheme, launched to tackle rising joblessness and train young people in digital skills, has announced quick successes.
“Our graduates have earned $50,000 in past seven months through freelancing and this amount will increase exponentially with increasing number of students learning skills,” Ahmed Islam, manager implementation strategy of the e-Rozgaar scheme, told Arab News.
The program, which formally began last May, currently runs 20 training centers in Punjab.
“Our aim is to increase exposure of youth by training them to freelance online,” said Islam.
The project is supervised by the Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB), which gives three months training to young people who have undergone at least 16 years of formal education.
All the skills being imparted to the students are Internet-connected and include technical, non-technical and creative design.
Under the project, 40 centers, including five for female students, are being set up in the 36 districts of the province.
“We teach our students how to pitch their ideas to international customers and how to find work in the international market with competitive skills,” said Islam.
“We want young minds to become financially independent by exposing them to online opportunities and by training them in earning income through Internet,” he said.
The program envisages training at least 10,000 youth each year and if they earn $100 daily, Pakistan could earn around $36 billion foreign exchange per annum, added Islam.
The students are trained in web development basics, content marketing, creating engaging content, logo design, corporate identity kit, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe InDesign.
However, Mustaneer Abdullah, founder of Coresol Software Company, had mixed views of the scheme.
“Professionals who are already working in the field are employed to imparting the training to students,” he said. “They help the beginners to understand useful tools.”
But he added that a flaw in the scheme was that the government does not extend any protection to the freelancers for their online payment and some private banks have refused to open accounts of the freelancers, citing concerns about money laundering.
“If a freelancer works for $100, he will actually receive around $65 due to poor arrangements for online payments on the part of the government,” he said, referring to heavy bank charges.
He suggested the government set up a platform so that Pakistani freelancers could take orders for work and receive their payments directly.
An IT student could easily earn between $800 and $1,000 a month through freelancing while a professional could earn up to $2,500 a month by working online, said Abdullah.
Most of the IT-related work comes from the US, Denmark, and the UK, he said.
Asif Habib, principal consultant to Pakistan Software Export Board, told Arab News: “Unless a standardized regulatory body is set up to monitor the quality of digital skills being imparted to students and the quality of freelancing work, projects such as e-Rozgaarmay not be effective.”
Short training courses, such as those offered to students by the PITB, can create opportunities locally, but may not help in the highly competitive international market, Habib added.
“International customers like a diversified but proficient market and we can grab our fair share of work only if we train our youth on the modern lines,” he said.
“Our graduates have earned $50,000 in past seven months through freelancing and this amount will increase exponentially with increasing number of students learning skills,” Ahmed Islam, manager implementation strategy of the e-Rozgaar scheme, told Arab News.
The program, which formally began last May, currently runs 20 training centers in Punjab.
“Our aim is to increase exposure of youth by training them to freelance online,” said Islam.
The project is supervised by the Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB), which gives three months training to young people who have undergone at least 16 years of formal education.
All the skills being imparted to the students are Internet-connected and include technical, non-technical and creative design.
Under the project, 40 centers, including five for female students, are being set up in the 36 districts of the province.
“We teach our students how to pitch their ideas to international customers and how to find work in the international market with competitive skills,” said Islam.
“We want young minds to become financially independent by exposing them to online opportunities and by training them in earning income through Internet,” he said.
The program envisages training at least 10,000 youth each year and if they earn $100 daily, Pakistan could earn around $36 billion foreign exchange per annum, added Islam.
The students are trained in web development basics, content marketing, creating engaging content, logo design, corporate identity kit, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe InDesign.
However, Mustaneer Abdullah, founder of Coresol Software Company, had mixed views of the scheme.
“Professionals who are already working in the field are employed to imparting the training to students,” he said. “They help the beginners to understand useful tools.”
But he added that a flaw in the scheme was that the government does not extend any protection to the freelancers for their online payment and some private banks have refused to open accounts of the freelancers, citing concerns about money laundering.
“If a freelancer works for $100, he will actually receive around $65 due to poor arrangements for online payments on the part of the government,” he said, referring to heavy bank charges.
He suggested the government set up a platform so that Pakistani freelancers could take orders for work and receive their payments directly.
An IT student could easily earn between $800 and $1,000 a month through freelancing while a professional could earn up to $2,500 a month by working online, said Abdullah.
Most of the IT-related work comes from the US, Denmark, and the UK, he said.
Asif Habib, principal consultant to Pakistan Software Export Board, told Arab News: “Unless a standardized regulatory body is set up to monitor the quality of digital skills being imparted to students and the quality of freelancing work, projects such as e-Rozgaarmay not be effective.”
Short training courses, such as those offered to students by the PITB, can create opportunities locally, but may not help in the highly competitive international market, Habib added.
“International customers like a diversified but proficient market and we can grab our fair share of work only if we train our youth on the modern lines,” he said.
