On-Job-Training-Centres: a triple-win solution
On-Job-Training-Centres in Pakistan’s textile industries are providing career pathways to women and persons with disabilities while levelling up the industries to international standards.
Women and persons with disabilities often face extra barriers when looking for decent jobs. Due to the social and cultural barriers, and limited access to skills training, they struggle to find formal employment and earn a stable income to support themselves and their families.
But change is underway. One of Pakistan’s major industrial sectors – the textile sector – is taking steps to change that.
Pakistan is one of the largest textiles exporting countries in the world. The textile sector carries a big chunk of the country’s exports. With the EU Green Deal mandating more stringent corporate due diligence, including diversifying the workforce, the sector needed a viable win-win solution for both the industries and the communities they serve.
Tapping into Existing Potential
Given the sheer size and the variety of industries in the textiles sector, there is a huge demand for skilled labour. Each industry needs a workforce with unique and specific skills-set and knowledge of operations. To address this challenge, GIZ Pakistan, on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), set up On-Job-Training-Centres (OJTCs) across 15 partner factories.
The goal was simple: to onboard potential workers, especially women and persons with disabilities, and improve their employability by providing them crucial technical skills.
So far, 668 women and 122 persons with disabilities have benefited from these OJTCs. Most of them were fresh trainees without prior experience.
Empowering Communities
At a glance, these sorts of initiatives might strike one as merely a compliance tactic – but it’s a life-changing opportunity for many of the trainees. Some of them are first-time earners, breaking expectations held by generations preceding them. These trainings are not just skills-based but also builds their self-confidence and prepares them for a career in the textile sector enabling them to economically support themselves and their families.
“Now that I work, I can support my family. From my salary, I can pay the rent for our home, and I finance the education of my little sister.”
“I am the first woman of my family to leave the house to work. Slowly, the attitudes back home have changed as well. I’m currently putting my daughters through school so they can also work when they get older.”
The Business Benefit
For businesses, skilling women and persons with disabilities isn’t just about compliance. It’s about higher productivity, improved retention, and better work cultures. Institutionalising the support and empowering individuals on an administrative level trickle down to the work culture on the floor. It creates a workforce that is diligent and loyal.
For Pakistan, it ensures that factories are operating by international standards to maintain a competitive edge in global markets.
For Germany, one of Pakistan’s largest textile export markets in Europe, it ensures regular trade and waived tariffs. So German customers can enjoy Pakistan’s high-quality textile products without paying exorbitant import taxes.
Watch the video below to hear from our partner industry, Dekalb, on how OJTCs benefited both their employees and their business.