Joblessness, foreign workers and education system

At a colloquy organised recently by the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), business leaders mentioned two important things. The vice-chairman of Beximco Group Salman F Rahman, who is also a former president of the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI), said his company employed some 40 foreigners at the management level. He interviewed local graduates but found them not suitable for those managerial jobs. Most of the corporate houses have the same experience. He said, the problem is more important than those of land, infrastructure and energy.
A K M Fahim Mashroor, a  former President of Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Service (BASIS), said that some 0.5 million foreigners have been working at managerial level of various corporate bodies and taking away huge sums of foreign exchange from the country whereas most of our graduates remain unemployed here. He urged everybody to take steps to reduce our dependence on foreigners.
According to UNDP's Asia-Pacific Human Development Report 2016, though Bangladesh has made progress in primary education, challenges remain at the higher levels. The future of the country depends on how it can develop higher levels of education to build skills in the youths to enable them to help themselves and contribute to the development of the country.
The Finance Minister touched on the issue of foreign workers in the current year's budget. But action taken so far only shows that the National Board of Revenue (NBR) has taken measures to raise revenues and bring the foreigners working here under tax net. The Finance Ministry will give an update of the situation at the end of the current financial year ending on June 30, 2016 and provision proposed for next financial year will take effect from July 01, 2016. This is so far as government revenue is concerned, but the question of educated unemployed youths remains unanswered. It should be addressed for sustained economic growth.
   There are reports that foreign funds provided for development projects in education sector are not properly utilizsd. Implementation, Monitoring, Evaluation Division (IMED) of the Ministry of Planning should take up the matter seriously and involve people in project implementation.
Remittance inflows, especially from the Middle East countries, are enriching the country's foreign exchange reserve. The questions that are being raised are: has it increased productive private investment and improved quality of education. If so, why is private investment stagnating? These are to be addressed transparently by the government.
According to UNDP reports, there is a high degree of unemployment in the country and a large number of people are working in the informal sector. Instead of bringing people from outside for managerial positions, more people may be brought in to provide training to create skilled manpower. We get heart-rending reports from time to time about how unemployed educated youth and workers are frantically looking for employment abroad spending their last farthing and ending up in despair, torture and even death. Local trafficking syndicates, in connivance with regional or international syndicates, lure the innocent people with lucrative offers. There are similar frauds within the country also who extract money from educated unemployed by giving false hopes of employment.
There is no denying of the fact that skills and critical faculty of graduates and post-graduates from our universities do not match the requirements needed at the global level. While many people are sent abroad for higher education or training on government and/or foreign assistances, their contribution, on return, is not monitored by the concerned authorities. As a result, the country continues to fall back on foreigners to perform at executive positions, particularly in corporate houses.
The standard of higher education in general and the public universities, in particular, must be improved to enable our students to compete at the global level.  Very little is known to have been done so far in this respect. The recent Bangladesh Bank reserve heist is an example of incompetence of internal management of the central bank arising out of inadequate knowledge on cyber management.

The writer is an economist and socio-political activist.
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