LAHORE – Students of the Prime Minister’s Youth Skill Development Programme (PMYSDP) are still awaiting their last two months of stipend that was promised to them by the government, Daily Times reported.
According to details, the students have completed their six months’ diploma courses but their arrears have not been cleared by the institution till the filing of this report. At least 73 students are in the queue to get stipend amount Rs 2500 of each month from December 2015 to February 2016. The course was started in the month of August 17, 2015 that ended February 17, 2016.
These students were enrolled in different diploma courses of six months including Fashion Designing, Dress Making, Textile Designing and Printing Designing at University of Management and Technology (UMT), Lahore campus.
The PMYSDP was offered approximately in 10 selected institutes in Lahore District that is being executed by the National Vocational and Technical Training Commission (NAVTTC). The PMYSDP was launched to enhance employment opportunities, alleviate poverty and to provide skilled workforce to large, medium and small scale industry and to meet the international labor market needs.
It is pertinent to mentioned here that NAVTTC had developed its own internal Monitoring and Evaluation system for observing, reporting and assess the activities against the set targets for each training project in terms of financial and physical parameters and NAVTTC standards. However, they cannot facilitate to students who are still facing problems despite having monitoring and evaluation system.
The students told Daily Times that NAVTTC has promised to provide tool-kits and other things during their course but UMT did not provide to them anything except first two months of starting course. As well as, monthly stipend of Rs 2500 was given to selected trainees by NAVTTC that not provide to them on time.
They said that despite informed to concerned official of the educational institution about their problems, he always making lame excuses and giving false assurance to them. Replied in a query, students told “They have trying to raise issues many time in front of the NAVTTC monitoring team during their visit but the institution management always stopped to them for raising any issue.”
While talking to Daily Times, NAVTTC spokesperson Hammad said that all funds were released to concerned institution on timely from NAVTTC and no delay from their side. He said that all meters would be cleared in next week and stipend would be distributed among the pass out students. NAVTTC will probe this matter of delaying stipend and take action against the responsible person, he said.
UMT Spokesperson told Daily Times told that e-application have been forward to account office in last week for releasing stipend to students but due to burden of internal matter this issue was behind of other affair. He said that account office will forward the application to high authority for signature in the next week and after getting approval, amount of stipend will be distributed among the students.
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