ISLAMABAD (ILO News) - The first ever professional Association for ‘Career Counsellors and Vocational Guides’ has been launched here by International Labour Organization (ILO). The Association will comprise of the trained and qualified Career Counsellors and it will help in professionalization of Career Counselling sector in Pakistan. Unfortunately, during last 65 years, the Career Counselling sector could not get due attention and that is the reason for almost negligible outputs of Career Counselling in the country. As a result, the young women and men could not make informed decisions about their career paths and majority of them join different fields – just as a matter of luck and opportunity mostly resulting into ‘wrong person in wrong jobs’. The Association is launched at the concluding session of a 5-day training course organized by ILO on ‘Institutionalizing Career Counselling & Vocational Guidance’ in Lahore today. This was the second training course in the series. The first course took place in Karachi early December 2012.

“Career counseling and vocational guidance services are essential for facilitating nation’s human resources to right opportunities, where they can perform to their full potential”, observed Managing Director Punjab Vocational Training Council, Sajid Naseer. The five-day intensive training workshop was organized by International Labour Organization’s project titled, “Empowering Vulnerable groups through employment, Education and Training (EET)”. The training is being organized by FCG Human Capital. Mr Naseer also highlighted the need for a coherent and integrated approach towards career counseling, which involves both public and private sectors.

Mr Saad Gilani, Senior Program Officer, ILO, highlighted the role of ILO in promoting employment and employability of people through technical and vocational training across Pakistan especially in Punjab. “Effective vocational training is not possible without proper career counseling of those who enroll in such programs. Vocational guidance is an established practice all over the world and is required as a Life-Cycle Approach’, i.e starting from primary education and up to the retirement of a professional. Career counseling is vital for labour force development of a country. Effective career counseling is about providing employment information and career guidance to all those who need them especially those who cannot afford to pay for this service; it is also about assessing the potential of the candidate and then matching the advice to best suit his or her circumstances. Matching individual’s skills and talents with the job requirement has now become a complex activity and can no longer be delivered by untrained people”. He hoped that the participants would benefit from the training, the first- of- its-kind in Pakistan.

Career counseling and vocational guidance has increasingly been recognized as an important element of employment promotion and efficient labour market practices. Pakistan’s youth need to be guided to proper vocations and employment opportunities that best exploits their talents.

Shadab Fariduddin, CEO, FCG Human Capital, opined that this was a pioneering effort by ILO to institutionalize career counseling and vocational guidance in Pakistan. Pakistan would join the ranks of those countries where career development profession is well established. Participants would become founding members of professional association that will represent Pakistan on global forums.

Workshop participants came from universities, Punjab TEVTA, PVTC, development sector organizations and colleges.

This event is part of ILO’s broader agenda to institutionalize career counseling and vocational guidance in Pakistan, which suffers from a severe shortage of trained and qualified career counselors. Punjab’s vocational and technical education system produced more than one hundred thousand graduates in various trades offered by some 700 institutions under PVTC and Punjab TEVTA. However, there are no well-trained career counselors to guide the students in the system. With the help of ILO, first batch of 30 persons have now been trained in career counseling and vocational guidance skills. Similarly, another 30 career counselors were trained in Sindh early this month.

For further information please contact:

M. Saifullah Chaudhry (PhD)
Senior Programme Officer
ILO Country Office for Pakistan
Email
Tel.: +92 51 2276456-8