The Ministry of IT & Telecommunications recently hosted a ceremony at the Faculty of Law, University of Turbat, to distribute stipends to the successful trainees of the Ignite-funded DigitalSkills Training & Support Program for Southern Balochistan.
Sadiq Iftikhar, Minister of State for IT & Telecom, attended the ceremony as the special guest of honour. Other luminaries that attended the occasion as guests of honour included Dr. Abdul Malik Baloch, a former chief minister of Balochistan, and Lala Rasheed Dashti, a chief minister of Baluchistan’s advisor.
Speaking at the event, Sadiq Iftikhar expressed his pride at seeing so many young people in Balochistan committed to learning and education. The State Minister stressed the need of making collective efforts to advance IT education in this region of the nation.
Additionally, he emphasised the value of digital skills and the IT ministry’s contribution to the province’s development of qualified human resources. He thanked Ignite, Virtual University, the Universities of Turbat, Gwadar, and BUET Khuzdar for their efforts and congratulated the participants on the accomplishment of the training project in Balochistan.
In a video greeting to the attendees, Ignite’s CEO Asim Shahryar Husain described Ignite’s digiskills.pk programme, which is Pakistan’s largest online training programme for independent contractors and has more than 3 million students enrolled in 15 different freelancing courses over the past four years.
Freelancers taught by digiskills.pk are expected to make $290 million between 2021 and 2022, according to a third-party earnings analysis done last year.
According to him, the Ministry of IT, Ignite, and VU decided to start classroom-based training in three Southern Baluchistan districts—Turbat, Khuzdar, and Gwadar—in January of last year as a result of connectivity problems in that region.
In contrast to a goal of 5,000 enrollments, VU and Ignite have attained 7,800 enrollments after one year, proving the program’s success. The fact that 33% of the enrollees are female freelancers speaks something about their dedication to education and independence.
He praised the freelancers who had benefited from this training session and expressed his wish that they would soon find lucrative local and international freelancing jobs to support their families.
The chief guest ultimately gave out stipends to the freelancers who had successfully completed the digiskills trainings.