It has left no niche of human
life untouched today be it industry, trade, publishing, accounting,
graphics, advertisement, movies-making, or otherwise rutine office works.
The increasing demand for IT related exposure and experience for jobs of all
descriptions as visible from the least discerning job seekers to relize that
upgrading their computer skills is a must to get even a half decent job. Not
for nothing the world IT has become an unending refrain to ensure a job
placement today, a situation which will become a must in the near future.
This realization has resulted in the massive demand for the IT education in
the country which is clear from the mushrooming of institutions in every
nook and corner of the urban centers in Pakistan. These IT institutions
offer an array of certificates, diplomas and degree courses. Basically the
IT institutions in Pakistan can be divided into three primary classes-the
government institutions, private institutions with foreign affiliations, and
the totally locally owned and operate institutions.
The IT phenomenon has taken Pakistan like a storm which poses many questions
about the quality of IT education imparted by these institutions and its
relevance to the local job market. The basic question is are we producing
enough IT professionals to meet the demand and secondly, and more
importantly.
what is the quality of work force that we are producing?
South Asian countries-India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, and in that
order-are the only countries in the world which have anglo – saxon
traditions and English language proficiency. Now computer is an anglo- saxon
and English– speaking devise and so south Asia is the only region of the
world today which can benefit for such inherent advantages as many other
English- speaking countires like the USA, Canada, UK, Australia and New
Zealand have all short supply. “So the south asian regaion is today sitting
at boom situation similar to that of oil short supply. “so the south asian
region is today sitting at boom situation similar to that of oil boom
situation similar to that of oil boom in the middle East in the late 1960s
and we have to ready ourselves for this situation. The only difference is
that your had to ready yourself than to dig oil wells while here we have to
produce more IT manpower.
Presently Pakistan is producing now more than 2500-3000 quality I.T.
Professionals every year and because of this tremendious shortage we are not
able to achieve the kind of software expoet volumes that we want to. In
comparison, India is producing some 110,000 IT professionals annually and
that too for the last 15 fifteen years. It has a critical mass available of
1.5
million IT professionals to enable it to export $ 4 billions of software
through official channels and another $ 4 billion through unofficial
channels.It is targeting $ 100 billion of software exports in next five
years and I think it will achieve it. That is basically we are looking at
and it’s our vision to help produce that kind of quality IT workforce here
in Pakistan.
The process of launching a 6-month e-commerce programmed which is also very
intensive and is particularly meant for the people with the background in
bossiness BBA, MBA, B-Com, M-Com chartered and cost accountants. It will
help these professionals convert into e-commerce specialists. |