Learn, qualify, and get a job! Bridge program founders commit to candidates IT Industry Academia Bridge Program launched, will be spread over 16 universities in Sindh

The IT Industry Academia Bridge Program designed to train 3000 undergraduates in 16 public sector universities in Sindh was launched at Shaheed Benazir Bhutto University (SBBU), Lyari Karachi last week.
The ceremony held at the university’s main campus was presided over by Tanzila Umi Habiba, Special Assistant to the chief minister for Information, Science, and Technology. ‘With the execution of this program, my dream has come true, it was close to my heart from the very beginning’, she said.
We shall facilitate young people who want to lead the province in IT and other technologies, Tanzila assured. We have brought an expensive program to your university and now it is up to you how you benefit from it, she addressed the students.
The lead partner of the IS&T Department, Managing Director of Hazza Institute of Technology, Azhar Iqbal told the gathering that they had picked up the best lot of trainers from the IT industry across Pakistan. Because they wanted the successful trainees should go directly for job placements.
Almost 70 IT companies are with us, he claims assuring qualified trainees that they would be placed for jobs directly.
Vice Chancellor SBBU Dr. Amjad Siraj Memon welcomed the guests as hosts and appreciated the program, hoping the government would provide the requisite IT infrastructure to make the program a success. Dr. Memon said there was a big gap between industry and academia adding that despite the students being trained but still the probability of employability remained a question because they did not have industry exposure.
We have started paid internships at our university so that they ensure to be at their workplace as well as at the university. Now our IT Department is one of the leading departments in the university, Memon claims.
The training program which is executed in collaboration with Hazza Institute of Technology (HIT) includes IT training of the students of 6th to 8th semesters in 8 subjects that include MERN Stack, Web Engineering Basic LAMP/WAMP stack, Cloud Solution Architecture, SAQ (Selenium and Test Complete), Mobile App Development, MERN stack (Express, Mongo, and Node), Web Engineering Advance and Mobile App Development (React and Native).
Besides training students in various districts of Sindh, 200 faculty members and staff would also be trained.
Dr. Arshad Masood Director, IAB shared the overview of the program to a jam-packed university auditorium before MD Datacom Limited Syed Zulfikar Ali who talked about the IT Industry perspective.
Dr. Ashraf who has worked with academia for forty years said this is a very special initiative of the Sindh government. The result of industry-academia collaboration has been disappointing so far.
He talked about the utility of the bridge program saying the training designed under this program matched global demand. IT students learn low-scale skills in universities whereas we are talking about most modern skills.
This is like a semester course spread over 80 hours of which 20 percent would be utilized on theory and 80 percent on practical. Altogether, there will be 16 sessions spread over 18-week activity. The course would be embedded with regular semester programs of the universities.
He said they had selected the most experienced trainers from the industry as it was an industry-oriented program and not based on knowledge only.
Asif Ikram, the Secretary IS&T Department shared the Digital vision of Sindh saying over 60 percent population of the country is comprised of young people. We are investing in human capital which cannot be done without young people being trained.
The gathering was attended by IT professionals from the private sector and faculty members of the university besides government officers.