Minister for Industries and Production Mr. Ghulam Murtaza Jataoi visited TUSDEC head office in Lahore on December 6, 2013 to review the company’s interventions in accord with its strategic objectives. After a venerating reception, the Minister was apprised on company’s accomplishments over the years of its establishment. He was also briefed about the ongoing projects and the imminent contemplations of the company towards new technological horizons for industrial support. The Minister extolled TUSDEC’s intervention towards technically skilled workforce development for the solar energy sector and emphasized on its expansive implementation. He was also explicated about the three light engineering support centres that TUSDEC is setting up in Lasbella, Peshawar and Hyderabad. The initiative was avidly commended by the Minister for its substantial prospective contribution to enhance the production standards of the local SMEs which would help them in grabbing the shares from the export market and for the overall socioeconomic shift that will be resultantly brought to the area inhabitants.
While commenting on the governmental focus on industrial development, Minister apprised the audience about the 12% increase in production that has been experienced by the industry as only few months have folded for the new government. He pressed on the dire indigence to install further projects of technology support and skill enhancement to aid the industrial turf in the country specifically the SMEs through common facilitation. At the same time he appreciated TUSDEC for training 12000 people in contemporary technical skills under its varied initiatives of skill enhancement and for an equally colossal pool of candidates that is going to be trained from KP and FATA. TUSDEC CEO Mr. Basit Maqsood Abbasi then briefed the Minister about the effective steer that has been netted in the company’s ambit of operations to implement various projects of TVET sector reform in close collaboration with multi-funding agencies, international donors and local NGOs. Mr. Basit apprised the guests that TUSDEC is fostering to shift the TVET mechanism of Pakistan from a supply driven to a training system that is compelled by the industry’s demand for skills and expertise. While recognizing the company’s continual crack and stab to formulate a demand driven skill base to fuel the economy, the Minister stressed for the employability of the trained candidates through enabling coagulated liaison among the training institutes and the industry at large. He further endorsed the idea of forging a base of relevant technical manpower before inducing modern machinery and equipment in any specific industrial cluster. He said that after the new Government has taken over the charge, there are enlarged prospects of FDI approaching the country where availability of skilled manpower is one of the rudiments that can further catalyze the advent of foreign investment. The Minster MOIP directed that the company should keep on working robustly to achieve its strategic commitments with optimized effectiveness to support the local industry. He recommended that latest technologies should be brought in and then reverse engineered domestically to make them feasible generally for the small and medium industrial units.
Towards the end, the ministerial delegation visited the facilities at CR&DI (Cement Research and Development Institute) and NIDA Lahore and showed great satisfaction on the centres’ operations. CEO TUSDEC Mr. Basit Maqsood Abbasi informed the Minister about the two project on the upgradation of CR&DI and Skill Development Centre for Solar Technologies that are underway of research and development and will soon be submitted to the ministry for approval. The company crew comprised of the senior management was accompanying the CEO to attend the Minister and guests from MOIP.
