Govt to establish fund for tech education

Kathmandu, Oct. 26: The government is planning to establish a separate fund for technical education and vocational training.

As various 17 ministries are implementing skill development programmes on their own without coordination with each other, the government has been planning to run such programmes through a central fund with greater collaboration and coordination with the ministries.

According to joint secretary of the Ministry of Education (MoE) Baikuntha Prasad Aryal, government, private sector, non-government organisations and donor agencies cumulatively spent about Rs. 17 billion annually on technical education, skill development and training.

"The Fund will be established by April next year," Aryal said in an interaction on the role of private sector in skill development organized by Support to Knowledge and Lifelong Learning Skills (SKILLS) programme of UNDP and Society of Economic Journalists – Nepal (SEJON).

Speaking at the programme, stakeholders suggested that the technical education and vocational training was essential for the economic upliftment of the people and it should be expanded to every district in the country to facilitate in creating entrepreneurs and businessmen. 

Assistant country director of the UNDP Heema Devi Khadka said that vocational skill development programmes should be connected with the entrepreneurship.

"Such trainings should be demand-driven. Only then such trainings will prove successful with the trainees employed at various companies or run their own enterprise," she said.

Vice-chairman of the Council of Technical Education and Vocational Training (CTEVT) Kul Bahadur Basnet said that the skill development training did not only help the youth to be self-employed but would have resulted in more remittance as Nepal could send skilled workers to overseas.

Vice president of the Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI) Kishor Pradhan said that as the private sector had an important contribution in creating employment, the government should work in collaboration with them while designing and implementing skill based training.

"The FNCCI believes that the private sector not only creates employment but it also promotes small enterprises in the value chains of the large industries and helps in entrepreneurship development at the local level," he said.

Presenting a paper on the role of private sector in technical education and vocational training, former secretary of the MoE Mahashram Sharma said that the current programmes for skill training were insufficient to address the ever increasing manpower that enters the labour market every year.

"Approximately 450,000 people enter into the labour market every year but only about 100,000 people are being trained on technical education and vocational training," he said.

He said that although the government and donor agencies were running skill development trainings, the Nepalese private sector seldom called for the human resources it needed.