Skill training is a neglected area
Wednesday, 6 October 2010
Enayet Rasul Bhuiyan
Bangladeshis everywhere in the world have proved their worth as reliable and hard working people. Many of them did not find jobs at home but did considerably well by doing even odd jobs abroad and remitting their earnings home that contributed so much to the country's foreign currency reserve while helping their families. But these earnings could be so much the higher for the country and their own selves and their families with lift-up effect on the economy as a whole from their inward remittances leading to diverse investments, if they had gone abroad, in the first place, as fully skilled workers or professionals.
As it is, most of the Bangladeshi job seekers abroad are found to be unskilled or semi-skilled. This is the reason why Bangladesh's earnings from the manpower export trade are comparatively much less than even its neighbours such as India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The greater success of these countries in sending out more skilled workers abroad -- whose earnings are substantially greater than workers in the unskilled or semi-skilled categories -- is linked to governments and even the private sector there playing a far greater role in contrast to the government and the private sector in Bangladesh in imparting skill training to potential overseas workers.
The skill training needs to be not only with a view to the external job market. The training can be of great value in helping unemployed youth in large numbers to go for self-employment at home. The same increases the availability of a trained workforce relying on which local and foreign investors can consider setting up all kinds of enterprises. Indeed, the gamut of economic activities in the country stands a better chance of increasing as its number of skilled workers start increasing.
But skill training is a neglected area in the Bangladesh context with its government contributing not enough towards this end in contrast to what great gains can come to the economy if skill training is taken up actively as a major public policy not in words but in deeds. One may say that that the government's small size and reduced role are desired everywhere. In the era of market economy and free enterprise, the government's role can be argued to have shrunk, conceptually. Nonetheless, there are areas where the government is duly expected to play a bigger role or predominant role to hasten productivity and economic growth. Such an area is skill development to create a wide range of skills in the country's workforce to enhance employment prospects, either institutional or self-employment, or to improve production capacities. Both in turn can work as powerful catalysts for economic growth.
Government's ample spending for skill development is all the more necessary because the private sector may prefer not to invest in this area out of a consideration of low profits. The high cost of skill training under the private sector is also likely to exclude most seekers of such training on the ground of their inability to pay for the training. Thus, government's role as a skill trainer assumes great importance in a country like Bangladesh.
Presently, opportunities for skill training or vocational training provided by the government are limited to the country's small number of polytechnics and some programmes under the ministry of youth. But these are inadequate compared to the requirement and calls for much expansion of such training facilities and programmes. The expansion of skill training activities may be looked upon as gainful activities by the government if these are conducted with some vision.
For example, the government may conduct market survey of the sort of skills that have growing domestic demand and in the international labour market. Accordingly, it can set up its training establishments and programmes and no doubt this will call for substantial investments on the part of the government. But the investment will promote economic growth and higher productivity. Besides, the government can also recover the invested sums of money in the longer run by providing training free of costs or at nominal fees but obliging the recipients of the training to pay back the full amounts of their training fees in instalments from their monthly wages or salaries on finding employment or setting up their own enterprises.
Such a model of skill training will serve several objectives. First of all, young persons in far bigger numbers will be able to train easily as they will not be frustrated by the relatively higher costs of private training. The skilled ones coming out of government training institutions will form a bigger pool of the trained workforce to undertake various economic activities. The number of the employed -- institutionally employed as well as the self-employed -- will rise notably. Training will also likely improve productivity per worker. The economy in a variety of ways may benefit from the availability of a well-trained workforce and government would be investing in a highly prospective field and also getting gradual returns from its investments.
A report published in this paper sometime ago emphasised how a very paying source of manpower export from Bangladesh could open up in the developed countries where shortages in their labour force are already a reality. The working people are noted to be decreasing by some 10 per cent per year from the ageing of population and the drastically fallen birth rate in those countries from social practices or not having babies. Already, these countries are getting ready to admit workers on a large scale from the developing countries including Bangladesh.
Compared to the earnings from our expatriates in some middle eastern countries and elsewhere, Bangladeshi workers, if they exploit this opportunity in the developed countries, would be earning handsomely because of the tradition of good payment of wages in those countries and the significantly higher exchange values of their currencies in relation to the Taka. For example, there is presently a big and serious shortage of nurses and technicians for the health services in many developed countries. If only the government in Bangladesh starts up a crash training programme to create such medical professionals, then a significant number of them would be ready for dispatch to the developed countries within a year or so.
Fairly soon, several million workers from Bangladesh could make the most of this opportunity in the developed countries. But is Bangladesh ready? It seems not. The developed countries, which are keen to import this manpower, would require that the manpower is suitably trained to conform to their skill requirements. Thus, the government here should lose no time in assessing the skill requirements that would have to be met to send our workers in these countries and start large-scale skill training programmes to that end. These things have to be done swiftly so that we do not miss the bus.
Bangladeshis everywhere in the world have proved their worth as reliable and hard working people. Many of them did not find jobs at home but did considerably well by doing even odd jobs abroad and remitting their earnings home that contributed so much to the country's foreign currency reserve while helping their families. But these earnings could be so much the higher for the country and their own selves and their families with lift-up effect on the economy as a whole from their inward remittances leading to diverse investments, if they had gone abroad, in the first place, as fully skilled workers or professionals.
As it is, most of the Bangladeshi job seekers abroad are found to be unskilled or semi-skilled. This is the reason why Bangladesh's earnings from the manpower export trade are comparatively much less than even its neighbours such as India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The greater success of these countries in sending out more skilled workers abroad -- whose earnings are substantially greater than workers in the unskilled or semi-skilled categories -- is linked to governments and even the private sector there playing a far greater role in contrast to the government and the private sector in Bangladesh in imparting skill training to potential overseas workers.
The skill training needs to be not only with a view to the external job market. The training can be of great value in helping unemployed youth in large numbers to go for self-employment at home. The same increases the availability of a trained workforce relying on which local and foreign investors can consider setting up all kinds of enterprises. Indeed, the gamut of economic activities in the country stands a better chance of increasing as its number of skilled workers start increasing.
But skill training is a neglected area in the Bangladesh context with its government contributing not enough towards this end in contrast to what great gains can come to the economy if skill training is taken up actively as a major public policy not in words but in deeds. One may say that that the government's small size and reduced role are desired everywhere. In the era of market economy and free enterprise, the government's role can be argued to have shrunk, conceptually. Nonetheless, there are areas where the government is duly expected to play a bigger role or predominant role to hasten productivity and economic growth. Such an area is skill development to create a wide range of skills in the country's workforce to enhance employment prospects, either institutional or self-employment, or to improve production capacities. Both in turn can work as powerful catalysts for economic growth.
Government's ample spending for skill development is all the more necessary because the private sector may prefer not to invest in this area out of a consideration of low profits. The high cost of skill training under the private sector is also likely to exclude most seekers of such training on the ground of their inability to pay for the training. Thus, government's role as a skill trainer assumes great importance in a country like Bangladesh.
Presently, opportunities for skill training or vocational training provided by the government are limited to the country's small number of polytechnics and some programmes under the ministry of youth. But these are inadequate compared to the requirement and calls for much expansion of such training facilities and programmes. The expansion of skill training activities may be looked upon as gainful activities by the government if these are conducted with some vision.
For example, the government may conduct market survey of the sort of skills that have growing domestic demand and in the international labour market. Accordingly, it can set up its training establishments and programmes and no doubt this will call for substantial investments on the part of the government. But the investment will promote economic growth and higher productivity. Besides, the government can also recover the invested sums of money in the longer run by providing training free of costs or at nominal fees but obliging the recipients of the training to pay back the full amounts of their training fees in instalments from their monthly wages or salaries on finding employment or setting up their own enterprises.
Such a model of skill training will serve several objectives. First of all, young persons in far bigger numbers will be able to train easily as they will not be frustrated by the relatively higher costs of private training. The skilled ones coming out of government training institutions will form a bigger pool of the trained workforce to undertake various economic activities. The number of the employed -- institutionally employed as well as the self-employed -- will rise notably. Training will also likely improve productivity per worker. The economy in a variety of ways may benefit from the availability of a well-trained workforce and government would be investing in a highly prospective field and also getting gradual returns from its investments.
A report published in this paper sometime ago emphasised how a very paying source of manpower export from Bangladesh could open up in the developed countries where shortages in their labour force are already a reality. The working people are noted to be decreasing by some 10 per cent per year from the ageing of population and the drastically fallen birth rate in those countries from social practices or not having babies. Already, these countries are getting ready to admit workers on a large scale from the developing countries including Bangladesh.
Compared to the earnings from our expatriates in some middle eastern countries and elsewhere, Bangladeshi workers, if they exploit this opportunity in the developed countries, would be earning handsomely because of the tradition of good payment of wages in those countries and the significantly higher exchange values of their currencies in relation to the Taka. For example, there is presently a big and serious shortage of nurses and technicians for the health services in many developed countries. If only the government in Bangladesh starts up a crash training programme to create such medical professionals, then a significant number of them would be ready for dispatch to the developed countries within a year or so.
Fairly soon, several million workers from Bangladesh could make the most of this opportunity in the developed countries. But is Bangladesh ready? It seems not. The developed countries, which are keen to import this manpower, would require that the manpower is suitably trained to conform to their skill requirements. Thus, the government here should lose no time in assessing the skill requirements that would have to be met to send our workers in these countries and start large-scale skill training programmes to that end. These things have to be done swiftly so that we do not miss the bus.