FAISALABAD:Faisalabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FCCI) President Engineer Hafiz Ihtasham Javed said on Wednesday that rapid industrialization was the only readily available option to resolve the problems of burgeoning population.
After signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the National University of Modern Languages (NUML), he said the FCCI had played its dynamic role in strengthening the process of industrialization, however to sustain it, industry-academia collaboration was vital. He said the colonization process of M3 Industrial Estate was in full swing where auto, pharmaceutical and mobile phone assembly plants were also being established in addition to hi-tech units. He said that educational institutes must improve their technical courses to ensure skilled manpower for these new units.
He further said the first Special Economic Zone under CPEC was also being established in Faisalabad which would have the latest and state-of-the-art industrial units, and maximum of their products would be exported to earn precious foreign exchange. He said the provision of skilled manpower was a major challenge, for which, industry-academia liaison was imperative. He said that technical courses should be launched with maximum stress on practical know-how so that our experts could efficiently handle the trouble shooting problems locally and we could not depend on the foreign experts. He expressed satisfaction over the cooperation of FCCI with other educational institutes and said the Higher Education Commission (HEC) had issued a clear directive that no BS level degree could be issued without completion of internship by the student concerned. He assured that he would accommodate maximum internees from NUML University by placing them in their related field. Regional Director NUML Azhar Hayat also underlined the importance of industry-academia linkages and said that employers could pick the best and competent students for their absorption in their unit on the basis of their performance during their internship period directly under their supervision.