Producing skilled workforces

Though Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid recently mentioned that Bangladesh is seriously committed to turning the country’s huge youth population into ‘skilled forces’ the ground reality does not support the minister’s claim. The reality is only 10 per cent of the total students in this country usually go for technical and vocational education whereas in economically strong Singapore, this figure is 65 per cent. The figure clearly tells us why Singapore—though it has hardly any agricultural base—is a strong economy, but Bangladesh is not.
Not long ago, Bangladesh’s economy was mostly agriculture-based and traditional methods were used in agriculture. Even now we cannot say that our majority farmers use scientific ways of farming. But Bangladesh can never depend on its agriculture and it must focus its attention on making the industrial base stronger if the nation at all wants to become a middle income nation shortly.
Hopefully avenues for industrial development are opening up and it is felt that there is an increased short supply of skilled and technical manpower for even our burgeoning industrial sector. If political stability becomes a reality here, the nation will soon see spurt of economic activities with more local as well as foreign direct investment. It is a matter of great worry that investment, local or foreign, has hit a snag in recent years.
But the overseas job markets are demanding more skilled and semi-skilled manpower over the years and the unskilled workers that we are sending are hardly being able to help themselves, contribute to their families and in a larger sense to the nation. This is despite the fact that workers’ remittance is the second most important driver of Bangladesh economy. Therefore, it is a repetition to say that we have to enlarge our scope of technical education through diversifying the fields. For example, trained nurses are more in demand in some countries and the government can train unemployed young women and girls in nursing and send them to the relevant countries establishing and maintaining linkage with these countries in this regard.
In a planned way the nation now needs to increase expenditure on technical education taking it as an investment that would surely give huge benefits for the nation in the long run. Putting emphasis on the technical and vocational education does not necessarily mean undermining the general education. The point is that we have to make our unemployed youth productive and our industrial base strong and in this regard the necessity of science-based technical education can hardly be overemphasised.  

Producing skilled workforces

Though Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid recently mentioned that Bangladesh is seriously committed to turning the countrys huge youth population into skilled forces the ground reality does not support the ministers claim. The reality is only 10 per cent of the total students in this country usually go for technical and vocational education whereas in economically strong Singapore, this figure is 65 per cent. The figure clearly tells us why Singaporethough it has hardly any agricultural baseis a strong economy, but Bangladesh is not. Not long ago, Bangladeshs economy was mostly agriculture-based and traditional methods were used in agriculture. Even now we cannot say that our majority farmers use scientific ways of farming. But Bangladesh can never depend on its agriculture and it must focus its attention on making the industrial base stronger if the nation at all wants to become a middle income nation shortly. Hopefully avenues for industrial development are opening up and it is felt that there is an increased short supply of skilled and technical manpower for even our burgeoning industrial sector. If political stability becomes a reality here, the nation will soon see spurt of economic activities with more local as well as foreign direct investment. It is a matter of great worry that investment, local or foreign, has hit a snag in recent years. But the overseas job markets are demanding more skilled and semi-skilled manpower over the years and the unskilled workers that we are sending are hardly being able to help themselves, contribute to their families and in a larger sense to the nation. This is despite the fact that workers remittance is the second most important driver of Bangladesh economy. Therefore, it is a repetition to say that we have to enlarge our scope of technical education through diversifying the fields. For example, trained nurses are more in demand in some countries and the government can train unemployed young women and girls in nursing and send them to the relevant countries establishing and maintaining linkage with these countries in this regard. In a planned way the nation now needs to increase expenditure on technical education taking it as an investment that would surely give huge benefits for the nation in the long run. Putting emphasis on the technical and vocational education does not necessarily mean undermining the general education. The point is that we have to make our unemployed youth productive and our industrial base strong and in this regard the necessity of science-based technical education can hardly be overemphasised.