austraLasia
#1790
Church-run Technical Training Center
Offers Industry Skills
The following report is by the
UCA News Agency - our readers may be interested in it
LAHORE, (UCAN) 17th March 2007 -- Mohammad Waqar prefers studying
and improving his skills to his previous job as a mechanic and the verbal abuse
that came with it.
"Scolding was the bonus I got, along with the daily salary
of 10 rupees, (US$0.17) for a hard day's work of 12 hours in a street workshop,"
he said. "Now I am more than a chotu," he added. The term for "boy:
carries the same subservient sense it has in English when used for a male who is
not a child.
Waqar, 19, told UCA News he came to the Don
Bosco Technical and Youth Center after a cousin studying at the center
recommended it. He is one of five Muslims who study at the center alongside 115
Christian youths. They range in age from 15 to 22.
The
centre, run by the Salesians of Don Bosco, opened in 2000 with 10 Catholic
boarding students. Since then it has graduated 120 young
men.
Spread over an area the equivalent of three football
fields, the center offers technical skills to youths, most of whom dropped out
of school, as Waqar did. It is off the main road, in the quiet southern
outskirts of Lahore
270 kilometers southeast of Islamabad.
"For many of them,
this is the last chance to receive any education at all," Salesian Father Miguel
Angel Ruiz, the center's principal, told UCA News as he watched Waqar and other
young men work on a car engine. The Spanish priest, in charge since 2002,
describes his mission as one of service to poor youths.
The centre has expanded from one
to four technical trades: automotive, electrical, metalwork, and air
conditioning and refrigeration. Students in its two-year program learn skills in
each of these trades.
We produce skilled manpower, instead
of a person with limited knowledge, to respond to (Pakistan's) annual need for 1
million skilled workers in local industries," Father Ruiz
said.
In the mornings, the young men study classroom
subjects such as math, technical drawing, English and Urdu, the national
language. After lunch, they change and head for the well-equipped
workshops.
Catholic youths can stay in the centre's
hostel. The charge is 500 rupees a month including tuition. Non-boarding
students are charged 350 rupees.
Finding money to cover
the center's operating costs is a challenge, Father Ruiz said, so the centre has
a couple of projects that put the skills of its students to work even before
they graduate.
Second-year metalworking classes now
produce 140 beds and 196 tables a month, and these are sold to help defray
costs.
Currently, the students are working to supply 1,200
beds and 200 dining tables for survivors of the October 2005 earthquake. They
are needed for a housing project Salesians started in November 2005 in Manu
Jabra, a mountainous northern area. The initiative came about after a local
hakim, a physician without formal qualifications, asked for help at a
Salesian medical rehabilitation camp in Abbotabad, close to the epicenter of the
quake.
The Lahore centre, which employs three licensed
engineers, also has been blessed with volunteer help. Graduate Aliyas Mushtaq
offers introductory classes in electrical theory, and Waheed Nobel, a Salesian
seminarian, teaches English.
Students admire the school's stress on family
and social values. Tools are never locked in cupboards, according to Paras
Masih, a Catholic student in his final year, who also said he cannot remember
any instance of theft. "I bring the same trust and confidence back home," Paras
told UCA News. His parents considered him "good for nothing after I left school
in grade five," at the age of 11, he said.
For Father
Ruiz, 34, the educational gap among the youths is a major problem. "The level of
understanding differs between those who have attended grade 10 and a big group
who have not even reached grade eight," he explained. Last year 50 percent of
the students were disqualified from apprenticeship training for not meeting the
minimum required academic standard.
The centre is trying
to tailor itself to meet industry's needs. It registered with the Technical
Education and Vocational Training Authority (TEVTA) in 2005. TEVTA is the
nation's biggest network of polytechnic and vocational-training
institutions.
It is a challenge meeting that standard, the priest
acknowledged. But he has greater hope for the future, because a middle school,
up to grade eight, will start operating in 2009 on the
premises.
For many other young men, the training already
offers hope. "Thanks to the center, I can get a job as a trained technician at
any factory to work respectably in any trade," Waqar
said.
_________________
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