Turn youths into skilled manpower, says PM

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina underscored  Thursday the need for grooming up the youth as skilled manpower to grab the global labour market and thus increase the inward remittance flow, reports UNB.
"Our youths could fulfill the global labour market demand. If they could be groomed up as skilled workforce, the country's population would then no longer remain as a curse," she said.
The Prime Minister made the remarks while presiding over the third meeting of the National Skill Development Council (NSDC) at the Prime Minister's Office.
Briefing reporters after the meeting, PM's Deputy Press Secretary Nazrul Islam said the Prime Minister, also the NSDC Chairperson, directed the authorities concerned to strongly involve the private sector alongside the public sector in strengthening the skill development activities.
The meeting also approved the time-bound Action Plan (Phase-1) of the National Skill Development Policy with some observations aimed at further enhancing the skills of the country's labour force to meet the growing demand of the skilled workers.
The Time-bound Action-Plan (Phase-1), framed in light of the National Skill Development Policy-2011, will be implemented for the 2014 and 2015 calendar years.
The Prime Minister suggested incorporating the agriculture-related programmes such as poultry, argo-based industries and IT in the phase-1 of the Action Plan.
The components of the Phase-1 of Action Plan include nationally-recognised qualifications, competency-based training and assessment, ensuring quality of programmes and providers, strengthening the role of the industrial sector in skill development, accuracy of skills and labour market data for planning and monitoring, building competent and certified instructors and trainers, effective and flexible institutional management, strengthening apprenticeship system, improving under privileged groups' access, industrial training and workforce development, skill development for overseas employment. The meeting also reviewed the progress of the decisions taken in its previous meeting of the council.
Industries Minister Amir Hossain Amu, Expatriates Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister Engineer Khondoker Mosharraf Hossain, State Minister for Labour and Employment Mujibul Haque attended the meeting.
Cabinet Secretary M Musharraf Hossain Bhuiyan, Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister Abdus Sobhan Sikder, FBCCI president Kazi Akramuddin Ahmed, BGMEA President Atiqul Islam were, among others, present.