Govt sets target to export $5.0b ICT products by 2021

The government has developed 32,000 skilled manpower in the ICT sector in the last five years to address the shortage of skilled workforce in the information and communications technology industry, experts said, reports BSS.

They said the government has set a target of exporting ICT products worth US $5.0 billion by 2021 as the country's fast-expanding industry has the capacity to reach the target following creation of the skilled manpower.

Executive Director of Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC) Partha Pratim Deb told the news agency earlier there was a shortage of skilled workforce in the country's ICT sector and now the vacuum has been fulfilled largely after creation of the 32,000 skilled manpower.

"Youths are the driving force of Bangladesh and we would have to build them up as skilled manpower to face the twenty first century and build a Digital Bangladesh," he said.

An official familiar with the programme of 'Leveraging ICT for Growth, Employment and Governance (LICT)' said the ICT division has recruited a United Kingdom (UK)-based institution 'Ernst & Young' (EY) to instruct the youths.

The 32,000 graduate and post graduate youths from the colleges and universities of the country were selected through online examination, the official said.

Later, they were provided with training by the local and foreign instructors of the UK-based institution.

Some 10,000 youths, out of the total number of trained youths, who are post-graduate in IT and science background, got training on Top-Up IT.

The rest of 21,930 non-IT graduates received training on foundation course.

Up to July, 2018, some 4,059 youths, who received training on Top-Up IT, got jobs in IT-ITES (Information Technology Enabled Service) Institution.

Ernst & Young officers said, at first, it built master trainer pool by the local and foreign instructors to ensure world class training. Two George Washington University Professors - Dr. Shuvashis Dasgupto and Dr. Shibraj Kanungo - imparted training to the master trainers for improving their skills.

Project Director Kamal Mansharamami of the EY said the contents of training were verified from the University of George Washington.

One monitoring apps has been developed to reserve the data of trained youths and a web portal (bdskills.gov.bd) has also been created for generating their employments, he said.