Internet-based income making device for jobless youths stressed

Internet-based income generating opportunities for unemployed youths seen vital for making them economically self-reliant.
State Minister for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Division Zunaid Ahmed Palak made the observation while addressing a seminar titled "Learning and Earning: new possibility of self-reliance" in the city on Wednesday, reports BSS.
"Internet penetration has increased sharply in the past couple of years as nearly 40 million people in the country are now using internet," he told the seminar.
Chairman of Parliamentary Standing Committee on Posts, Telecommunication and Information Technology Imran Ahmed, Managing Director of Bangladesh Hi-Tech Park Authority Hosne Ara Begum and Joint Secretary (planning and development) of ICT Division Shyama Proshad Bepari, among others, addressed the seminar with Secretary of ICT Division Shyam Sundar Sikder in the chair.
Communication Consultant of Leveraging ICT for Growth, Employment and Governance Project Ajit Kumar Sarkar presented the keynote paper at the seminar, while Country Manager of Elance and oDesk Saidur Rahman made a presentation highlighting online market potentiality for Bangladesh.
The state minister said, "Bangladesh has become a role model for its rapid progress in the field of ICT and we have achieved many international recognitions for our success in ICT."
He said the government has envisioned its philosophy Vision 2021: Digital Bangladesh leading towards use of ICT to leverage economic growth and development to transform Bangladesh into a middle-income country by 2021.
"We all should work from our respective position by adopting knowledge on information technology (IT) to build 'Sonar Bangla' as dreamt by Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman," he added.
The state minister said Bangladesh already is enjoying the advantage of demographic dividend and it has vast potentiality to get benefit from demographic dividend as youths make up significant number of the total population.
"We are implementing a number of ICT-based programnmes to educate youngsters in both urban and rural areas to maximise the benefit of ICT to gain economic prosperity of the country," he added.
In his keynote paper, Ajit Kumar said in 2012 the Learning and Earning programme was introduced to provide training facilities to the young people aiming to build them as freelancers.
Under the learning and earning programme, as many as 15,000 freelancers were created in first phase while 55000 freelancers will be developed in the second phase, he told the seminar.
"At present about 0.50 million registered freelancers are engaged in outsourcing. Most of them are active in outsourcing market," Ajit Kumar said.