ISLAMABAD: Pakistan ranks number four in the $347 billion online freelancing or gig economy globally.
A report by Payoneer, an American financial services company, showed that positive steps taken by the Pakistani government led the country toward a record growth of 47% in freelancing earnings during the year 2021, according to an article published by WealthPK on Sunday.
The Punjab government’s e-Rozgaar programme also helped contribute to this massive growth in freelancing.
The youth-empowering programme is a joint initiative of the Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) and the Youth Affairs, Sports, Archaeology and Tourism Department. Under the programme, 45 training centres were established in many districts of the province with five of them only for women.
The number of women completing the training under the initiative is 52% of the total graduates with their earnings standing at about 50% of the total earnings.
WealthPK reports that the programme has acted as a capacity builder for youths, thus keeping them from migrating to bigger cities in search of jobs, as after getting training, they can work from home to earn handsome amounts.
It is worth mentioning here that Pakistan has also aligned this programme with the four main Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the UN and the World Bank.
The SDGs are specially designed to make youth population not only a part of future workforce but also the knowledge economy.
International tech players like Facebook, Google, etc. are also official partners of e-Rozgaar programme, who award every student with free mobile sites certification at completion of training.
Following the success of the e-Rozgaar programme, the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication has launched the National Freelancing Training Programme at the federal level, which is also being executed by PITB to provide training in digital marketing skills and freelancing to youths. At least 21,000 people would get training under the programme.
Under the e-Rozgaar programme, PITB is offering freelancing training in techniques, content marketing and advertising, creative design and e-commerce.
Technical training includes web development basics, HTML and CSS, PHP and MySQL (dynamic websites), building websites using WordPress, custom content type in WordPress, WordPress theme and plugin development, according to WealthPK.
Content marketing and advertising includes content marketing, content writing, search engine optimisation, social media marketing, search engine marketing, e-commerce, blogging, YouTube marketing, marketing funnels and e-mail automation.
Training on creative design includes Adobe photoshop, Adobe illustrator, Adobe InDesign, logo-designing, corporate identity kit design, T-shirt design and book cover design.
And e-commerce training includes Shopify store, drop shipping store, Facebook/Instagram for e-commerce store marketing, setting up of local e-commerce stores in Pakistan via Shopify and selling skills related to e-commerce on freelancing platforms.
Ch Ahmad Islam, Senior Project Manager, e-Rozgaar programme , told WealthPK that the initiative has proved something more than a success. “More than 100 freelance trainers are providing quality training at the 45 centres set up under the initiative.”
He said that the programme was launched in collaboration with the private sector universities to impart digital skills to the youth. He said that there was a great need to establish such type of centres on a large scale.
Ch Ahmad Islam said the programme is helping the government create online job opportunities for youths. He said that such training can be useful tools for home-based women as well. -INP
