Drawbacks of freelancing in Bangladesh

FE Team | Published: May 06, 2018 20:48:45

THIS refers to a letter titled "Freelancing career" by Md. Arifur Rahman Sumon published on May 4, 2018 in your Letters to the Editor column. Mr. Sumon highlighted the potential of a freelancing career. But I would like to point out some serious difficulties faced by freelancers as they are joining the profession in an increasing number.
Freelancing has become quite popular across the world today where any one can join either on full-time or part-time basis considering his/her knowledge and expertise. The person or group of persons concerned will have to login through the freelancing sites such as, freelancer, upwork, guru etc and must have international credit/debit cards or accounts in PayPal, Payoneer etc for invoice receipts and payments. But unfortunately most of the credit/debit cards of our country are not internationally recognised and accepted and Bangladeshi freelancers have no access to PayPal, Payoneer etc. This problem will have to be solved first through government initiative. For this reason many promising and talented freelancers cannot get registered for freelancing jobs. Secondly, no organised and comprehensive training programmes through government initiative for interested freelancers are available in the country. Some isolated private initiatives are there although they are nowhere near the requirement and more importantly they are concentrated in metropolitan areas. Thirdly, our intending freelancers lack both verbal and written communication skills in English and as such they are not being able to match their competitors from India and Sri Lanka. Fourthly, high speed internet is vital for growth and development of freelancing job which is not available in most areas of Bangladesh. Freelancing is a thrust sector that has immense potential. The government should look into the above shortcomings and take necessary steps to remove the barriers.
Md. Zillur Rahaman
Islami Bank Bangladesh Ltd.