License to skill – DAWN.COM

There is a glint in 25-year-old Rana Hashims eye. It seems like just yesterday when he lost his employment as a rider at a small company that downsized. It seems like just yesterday when he was picking odd jobs as a plumber and electrician to scrape through for his parents, wife and child. It seems like just yesterday when his wife was selling her jewellery collection to fund his admission and transport expenses. It seems like just yesterday when life was becoming a chore.

But not today.

Today, Rana Hashim is not simply a proud alumnus of Aman Tech, a large-scale vocational training institute established by the Aman Foundation in Karachis Korangi Industrial Area. He has also just received an offer of employment from a company in Bahrain as an air-conditioning and refrigeration technician. Life is about to take-off, and he couldnt be grateful enough for his Aman Tech experience.

Sprawling over six acres, Aman Tech has six fully equipped computer labs, a library, 18 workshops and a students breakout area. Groups of students gather around work tables on spotless floors and amidst hydraulic floor jacks, elaborate arrays of tools and instruments mounted on slick slat walls, simulator car engines, air compressors and all the nifty gizmos that make it a dream lab where a young man can play real life Lego.

In sharp contrast to greasy auto workshops, makeshift garages and dingy, badly-lit shops where an apprentice learns from a master, the Aman Tech premises are bright, air-conditioned and state-of-the-art yet simple. The institute imparts vocational training in disciplines as varied and specialised as automobiles, general electric, mechanical, refrigeration and air-conditioning, welding, fabrication, pipe work, plumbing and electronics.

After a year, students are ready to take on challenges at the highest levels and all this at a nominal fee. The only admission pre-requisite is matriculation or even below. Aman Tech has already improved the lives of over 1,000 young men by providing them job options; some 3,000 are presently under training.

Ranas big break came soon after graduating with flying colours, as he proudly tells me. A team of foreign recruiters had come to interview refrigeration and air-conditioning graduates, and Rana was one of the 25 graduates short-listed for an interview. Since he had been working on his English language skills, he aced the round. Im doing all of this for my little one. Shortly after that, he received his offer letter.

Like Rana Hashim, Waqar also discovered Aman Tech through friends recommendation. He enrolled in automobile training pursuing a passion that he held since childhood. When they were younger, Waqars over-protective father would not allow his siblings and him to go out much. Waqar would fuel his passion for cars by creating toy models from matchboxes. He started working with real cars at a workshop that paid him nothing and went from job to job, including fast food restaurants. Even in the 21st century, people frown upon blue-collar work, he says.

Presently Waqar works in the day at Honda Motors, does an evening shift at a fast food chain and sleeps only three hours a night. This way he gets to do what he likes, as well as take a decent pay packet home. What I learnt at Aman Tech cannot be compared to the hands-on experience you get by fixing cars in a workshop, but it gives you focus and an internationally recognised diploma, says Waqar.

Rana Hashim and Waqar are just two of the hundreds that advocate Aman Techs cause: to create a growing force of skilled workers, with a positive mind-set and a strong work ethic.

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License to skill - DAWN.COM