Creating skilled manpower for industries

Participating in a function held in Dhaka early this week, a government leader and also experts laid emphasis on the important aspect - empowerment through acquisition of need-based skills - of the country's education system. All the speakers found the current education system a faulty one as it churns out every year thousands of degree  or certificate-holders who can hardly meet the actual requirements of the domestic industries of all sorts. The majority of students pursue general education that, in most cases, does not have any relevance to the needs of the industries and specialised sectors.
The policymakers are to blame for the mismatch between the economy's need and skilled manpower. Successive governments have never attached due importance to the development of a need-based education system by making right assessment of the requirements of skilled manpower in various sectors of the economy, including industries and specialised service-oriented sub-sectors. In the absence of a clear picture about the manpower requirements of various sectors, students pursue their higher education without any clear career goal or objective.
A substantial drop in the number of students pursuing science education is worth-mentioning. Statistics available with various educational agencies do confirm a continuous decline in the number of students taking up science subjects at the tertiary level of education. Besides, the number of institutions offering technical education is far fewer than the requirements. Industries do usually need specialised skills that are, in most cases, linked to science education. The demand for skilled manpower would have increased to a great extent had the local industries spent money on one very important area -research and development (R&D).
Being the single largest contributor to the economy, the service sector absorbs the maximum number of people most of whom are unskilled. But the economy does need to ensure an expanded role of the manufacturing sector which can employ a greater number of people having the required skills. In that case, the requirement of skilled manpower will go up in core production areas. In the process, the demand for the same will also go up in other areas including management and R&D activities of various industrial units.
It should, thus, now be the priority job of the policy-makers to do the needful to make the situation on the ground conducive to the growth of industries. The building up of the needed infrastructure and ensuring energy and power supply would surely help spur industrial-sector growth. However, the manpower and education policies of the government need to be simultaneously redesigned, keeping in view the requirement of skilled manpower of various sectors of the economy.
Whoever remains at the helm of the statecraft will have to keep in mind the fact that the population of the country would reach 180 million by next 15 years. More than 60 per cent of them will belong to the working-age segment of the population. With agriculture losing its edge to other sectors, most part of the working-age population would have to be absorbed mainly in the industrial sector. It will, however, not happen automatically. Formulation of appropriate policies and their timely execution for building new industries and creating enough skilled manpower should be the priority tasks of the government. Hopefully, the government will try to accomplish the tasks.