Hundreds of thousands of fresh graduates are unemployed in Bangladesh. They have obtained their graduation degrees in various disciplines including Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Genetic Engineering, deemed very attractive across the world. Those employed are also not satisfied with their jobs due to poor remuneration and the lack of a proper working environment. According to their reports, the employers do not give importance to their technical degrees, talents, skills and expertise. Alternatively, the employers complain that graduates do not have skills they need.
An article published recently in the New York Times states that the governments and companies around Europe are trying seriously to retrain unemployed people for technology-related jobs. They are also setting up companies to lure university students to study mathematics, engineering and science in place of popular courses like humanities and social sciences. There are not sufficient numbers of people qualified for all the technology-related jobs in Europe. As such the countries have had to look beyond their borders to recruit candidates having the right skills. This is a good opportunity for the young graduates of Bangladesh who have obtained degrees in science, engineering or technology to fill the vacant posts. But somebody needs to take the initiative to put them at right places.
Senior people who lost jobs and many young people entering the job market are finding their skills ill-suited to the innovation-based jobs. There is a big mismatch. That means a large number of unemployed people are not well prepared for the pool of jobs there and the International Labour Organisation has warned that "skill mismatches and occupational shifts have worsened" all over the world.  A study released in November 2013 by the Eurofound showed that only a few graduates had obtained degrees in science, engineering and technology for the growing innovation-based job market in Europe, and despite their recession, almost 40 per cent of companies reported difficulty with finding workers having right skills. It is also learnt from other sources that about 900,000 ICT-related posts may lie vacant in the European Union by 2015.
At the moment there are more than one hundred universities in Bangladesh. In almost all the universities, computer science and engineering-related subjects are taught. As such the students acquire knowledge in Physics, Mathematics, Electronics, Telecommunications and Computing and also do their graduation in ICT, computer science or engineering. Unfortunately, a large number of them remain unemployed every year. They are unemployed, because nobody is there to take an initiative for marketing their skills, talents and expertise at home or abroad. But there are organisations for selling labour of unskilled people who do menial jobs. They earn a very small amount of money despite their hard work and they send a part of their earnings home. All these small amounts, when put together, form the second biggest source of foreign exchange for Bangladesh and there are the labour ministry, foreign ministry, expatriates' welfare ministry and others to encourage the young generation to go abroad and work as labourers. Their hard-earned money is being spent to decorate the cities. Unfortunately, not a single ministry or organisation has yet been established in the country to guide the young people and market their technological skills abroad.
As a senior citizen of the country, it is an expectation of this scribe that a new ministry, namely Ministry of Talented and Experts (MTE), will be established and an adviser will be appointed for marketing their talents and expertise. If done, they will not only earn money but also prestige for the nation.
Dr Lutfor Rahman is Chairman               of the Computer Science and Engineering Department at Stamford University Bangladesh. lutfor@agni.com
Ministry for marketing skills abroad
Prof Lutfor Rahman | Published: April 25, 2014 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2024 06:01:00
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