Employment opportunity in South Korea

FE Team | Published: March 06, 2024 21:00:15

Against the awful odyssey Bangladeshi migrants embark on en route to Europe, South Korean job market rather officially open to willing skilled workers of Bangladesh is indeed an window of opportunity. The latest news is that South Korea has offered an allocation of 11,500 jobs for workers from Bangladesh for the current year. Bangladesh has been a late entrant not only into Korean job market but also into the entire South East Asia known for economic dynamism and growth that began at the end of the last millennium. Singapore, Malaysia and Korea have been popular destinations for Bangladeshi migrant workers but there is a difference between demands for skill sets from these countries. South Korea primarily needs technical hands as against unskilled workers. At least a polytechnic degree or diploma is the minimum requirement for applying for jobs in that country. Regrettably, Bangladesh could send only 4,804 workers against a quota of 10,000 jobs allocated by the Korean government last year.
This is where the policy on migrant workers, employment abroad for educated youths and the overall education system comes under critical scrutiny. Bangladesh has 49 government polytechnic institutes and approximately 220 such private institutes but the number of such institutes is more than 600 if the technical schools are also taken into account. Now the Bangladesh Technical Education Board's records, as reported by a contemporary, on the admission of students to such institutes are highly disconcerting. Of the 185,055 seats in private technical institutes, 127,976 seats remained vacant in 2019-20 academic year. Even 7,127 seats out of a total of 56,170 seats in government institutes had no students. A lack of interest on the part of students in pursuing technical education is quite evident. This has hardly changed over the past three years. One of the reasons is certainly high cost for the four-year diploma course in private technical institutes. Students would rather opt for a general degree course which costs less or an equivalent amount.
Clearly, the education policy is at fault. While Germany and South Korea have put emphasis on technical education in order to boost industrialisation, Bangladesh with a huge pool of students have failed to advance this education the way it deserved. Even then the country should have filled the quota offered by South Korea. Currently, Bangladesh, reportedly, produces 24,000 diploma holders. There is no news that these diploma holders have jobs ready for them at home immediately after their passing out.
It is the mindset of the policymakers which is to blame for this mismatch between education and employment. Panning with the demography has gone haywire and reaping the demographic dividends has receded in the distant horizon. Or, else why does the government contemplate so late about raising the share of polytechnic degree holders to 51 per cent in education from the current 12 per cent? It was incumbent on policymakers to promote and popularise technical education in place of general education by making it less costly. At the same time the need for qualitative improvement had to be recognised aligning technical education with the need of the time. Instead of focusing on low-paid Middle-East menial jobs, a huge pool of technically educated manpower could be churned out to take jobs in technology-driven economies like the one of South Korea. Under the policy framework, the supporting system, including development of language skill, had to be put in place for the technically educated youths to take up challenges at home and abroad.