By Hifsa Raja ISLAMABAD, June 08, (INP-WealthPK): Speakers at a ceremony at the University of Haripur advised the students to develop their soft skills to achieve their career goals in the future, reports WealthPK. The three-day event was organised by the Office of Research, Innovation, and Commercialisation (ORIC) and the Accountability Lab Pakistan to help the students to develop their soft skills. A large number of leading businessmen, students and faculty members of the university, the local residents and academicians attended the event. Dr. Waseem Ahmed, the additional director of ORIC, said on the occasion that the event would help the students and other participants to develop their soft skills that would enable them to achieve their career goals. Speaking on the occasion, Vice-chancellor Dr. Ayub Khan said that the administration of the university was making concerted efforts to provide all the facilities to students. He advised the students to participate in extracurricular activities to discover their hidden talents and contribute to the progress and development of society. Haripur DPO Kashif Aftab Ahmed Abbasi was the chief guest at the event while the office-bearers of Haripur Chamber of Commerce and other associations of traders shared their views with the students. Humaira Khan, the deputy director of ORIC, told WealthPK that ORIC was imparting soft and technical skills to students through the Huawei Authorised Information and Network Academy (HANIA). The collaboration among Huawei Technologies, Higher Education Commission and the University of Haripur was helping the students to get essential soft and technical skills. “They are transforming the ICT industry in terms of skill application,” she added. Humaira Khan said that the facility of online registration for HCNA certification was available on the website of the university. Huawei Certified Network Associate (HCNA) is the starting point for the ‘Huawei routing and switching certification path’. The HCNA certification is comparable to that of Cisco Certified Network Associate. It is rapidly becoming a standard certification for network engineers and professionals. The HCNA course focuses on the most important routing and switching concepts and protocols. She told WealthPK that two distinct classes were scheduled for the course at different times. The first session is held from 2pm to 4pm from Monday to Thursday while the second class is conducted on Friday and Saturday. The hours of Friday session are from 2pm to 6pm while the Saturday’s hours are from 9:30am to 3pm. However, Dr. Syed Hassan Raza, an assistant professor at the School of Economics, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, said that skill development was not sufficient alone. He said that good infrastructure was also necessary. “The academy teaches ICT skills, but we lack the necessary infrastructure to implement it. Therefore, students must finally travel to China or elsewhere to get technical employment. The primary difficulty with our infrastructure is that we do not manufacture anything. We just assemble different items but it is not sufficient. The government should construct infrastructure to retain a trained and technical labour force and engage it in manufacturing different items,” he told WealthPK.