National Youth Policy would be announced after July 5

Anushika Ranadewa

Every country in the world has emerged and developed owing to technical education and Sri Lanka too has no option but to go the same way, Youth Affairs and Skills Development Minister Dullas Allahapperuma said. The Minister was addressing an event to recruit 28 instructors to Technical Colleges at the Youth Affairs and Skills Development Ministry auditorium recently.

Commenting on the topic, the Minister stated that the National Youth policy is currently being formulated with proposals of the country's intelligentsia. The policy would be announced after July 5. The recruitment was based on the examination held in 2011. The cadre approved by the Department of Technical Education now stands at 1,162 including the 28 selected. There are 522 instructors and one of them have been assigned to 55 students.

The Minister said the instructors ought to accept the challenge at a time when the attention of the whole country was focused on them, when they have begun to serve as members of this vital Department.

"The present state policy has been based on 'Mahinda Chinthanaya'. It is based on five platforms and one of them is the knowledge based unit. For this purpose, the suggestions, proposals and recommendations of the intelligentsia academics and the youth would be obtained. Topics, such as, education, skills development, unemployment would be addressed and prompt action taken" the Minister stated.

The Minister said for the first time, technology has been introduced as a subject for the Advanced Level Examination. He said this subject was introduced about 120 years ago, but neglected all these decades.

"Around 52% of the students enter the Arts stream for the Advanced Level Examination and this tends to create a big crisis. The government expects to split this number into two by introducing the technological stream. Even though the number of students studying in the technology stream range between 16% -30% presently, this will be increased to 40% in the near future" he said.

Secretary of the Ministry K.A. Thilakarathna, Acting Head of the Department of Technical Education Director General W. A. Jayawickrama also addressed the event.