Ten stu­dents of the Youth Train­ing & Em­ploy­ment Part­ner­ship Pro­gramme (YTEPP) have been giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ac­quire cer­ti­fied tech­ni­cal skills through the launch of a Part­ner­ing for Progress ini­tia­tive be­tween YTEPP and Met­al-X En­gi­neer­ing, which took place at the com­pa­ny's fa­cil­i­ty at Bil­jah Road, Ch­agua­nas. A re­lease stat­ed the part­ner­ship ini­ti­at­ed with a nine-month train­ing pro­gramme in struc­tur­al fab­ri­cat­ing, be­gin­ning on April 23. The YTEPP stu­dents will be based at Met­al-X En­gi­neer­ing in a hands-on, mod­ern train­ing en­vi­ron­ment. May­or of Ch­agua­nas Or­lan­do Nages­sar de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress at the launch.

"I was pleased to be present at the open­ing of the head of­fices of YTEPP in Ch­agua­nas re­cent­ly and this part­ner­ship with Met­al-X will present fur­ther op­por­tu­ni­ties for train­ing, job cre­ation and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment for our na­tion's youth. "I ex­pect great suc­cess from this pro­gramme and I hope that oth­er com­pa­nies will fol­low the ster­ling ex­am­ple that has been set by Met­al-X in pro­vid­ing a path­way for young peo­ple," the may­or said. He dis­closed that a new area had been iden­ti­fied for the de­vel­op­ment of a busi­ness es­tate in Ch­agua­nas and ex­pect­ed that a num­ber of prospects for em­ploy­ment in all sec­tors, in­clud­ing fab­ri­ca­tion, would come with the growth of this area. The YTEPP/Met­al-X train­ing pro­gramme will fo­cus on struc­tur­al fab­ri­cat­ing and will ex­pose the stu­dents to trade tech­niques such as drilling and cut­ting, as well as ad­vanced skills in struc­tur­al de­sign and fab­ri­ca­tion, shield­ed arc met­al weld­ing and plate fab­ri­ca­tion.

Chu­ra­man Su­chit of Met­al-X En­gi­neer­ing said the com­pa­ny had al­so de­vel­oped on-site class­room fa­cil­i­ties for the stu­dents that will ex­pose them to a com­bi­na­tion of the­o­ret­i­cal and prac­ti­cal knowl­edge and help cre­ate well-round­ed and skilled trades­men and crafts­men. Labib Na­j­jar, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Met­al-X En­gi­neer­ing, ex­plained the vi­sion be­hind the ini­tia­tive. "This part­ner­ship is in ho­n­our of my par­ents, who found­ed this com­pa­ny 53 years ago. It is fo­cused on giv­ing new life and growth to the in­dus­try and sat­is­fy­ing the needs of the high-in-de­mand and very spe­cialised area of struc­tur­al fab­ri­ca­tion. "Our com­pa­ny has amassed a wealth of ex­pe­ri­ence and knowl­edge in this sec­tor, and we want to share this ex­per­tise with the next gen­er­a­tion of in­dus­try lead­ers. This part­ner­ship with YTEPP is ex­act­ly in line with our vi­sion for cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for train­ing and job cre­ation to the ben­e­fit of our dy­nam­ic young peo­ple. In fact, we hope to em­ploy some of these trainees at Met­al-X."