The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has formally launched the second training phase of free technical training, skills and professional courses for the youth of merged districts under Accelerated Skills Development Programme (ASDP). Under the same project, training of 302 male and female of merged districts has been completed in the first phase with the support of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)’s Merged Areas Governance Programme (MAGP) and now in the second phase, another batch of 445 people is being trained with a monthly stipend of 5,000.
Similarly, about 5500 people will be equipped with necessary skills and technical training in this three-year project initiated for the development of the merged districts. The second phase of the project was formally launched on Thursday, here in one-day workshop on the Accelerated Skills Development Program in which the project director of the program Khalid Usman, officials of the Department of Industries and Commerce, UNDP representatives of MAGP program, industrial experts, journalists and people from other walks of life participated.
Speaking at the workshop, Project Director of the Programme, Khalid Usman said that the aim of this three-year project was to train the youth of the merged districts according to international standards in the best training institutions of the country and the province. He said that we were also giving monthly stipend to the trainees under this program and about 5577 applications of the aspirants for the second phase were received by the project unit.
On this occasion, the representatives of UNDP expressed their views and said that this important project started for the merged districts was considered necessary for the real development of these areas after the merger, which was started after a proper research survey. He said that this was a very useful and important project to make the youth of the merged districts employable. He said that many more programmes were under consideration under UNDP’s MAGP project for merged districts under the Department of Industries. On this occasion, industrial expert, Muhammad Umair expressed his views.
