Dhruba Prasad Dhungel

Executive director, Training Institute for Technical Instructors (TITI)

Most of the vocational education and training are related to occupation through which people earn their living. People from low economic strata are keener on acquiring some occupational skills to get employment or be engaged in self-employment to raise their quality of life.

Because of the nature of the training, skill imparting trainings are more expensive than awareness making training.

It involves materials and equipment to be used during trainings, which are very expensive

in some cases.

More the trainees are exposed to materials and process, better will be their performance. This demands greater financial resources.

Council for Technical Education and Vocational Training (CTEVT) mandated body for developing basic and middle level technical human resources are so poorly prioritised by the government that it hardly receives one per cent of the total educational budget.

Private sector business and industries do not feel it is their responsibilities to develop skilled human resources required for business and industries.

So this sector cannot flourish without certain mechanism that assures appropriate financing for ‘technical education and vocational training’.

Out of the 350,000 SLC takers, with an average pass rate of 50 per cent, 175,000 are left behind without any opportunities for further education.

These youth mainly look for vocational trainings. But the state provision is so inadequate that only a fraction of these students gets opportunity to be trained.

Hence the government should formulate such a policy that business and industries take part on developing technical human resources.

Several modalities can be found to have linkage with training and employment, which can be adopted in Nepal to improve the quality and quantity of technical human resources.