Sans skilled manpower, development is difficult

Md Yasin Ali :
The government is going to open seven mega projects to the public in next two to three months. It is no doubt a good news for Bangladesh economy at the time when S & P downgraded Bangladesh’s credit rating from stable to poor. The middle and lower income people are grappling with the soaring essential prices that aggravated the situation due to dwindling foreign reserve.
The seven mega projects are The Dhaka elevated expressway (Partial), the long awaited metro rail (MRT-6) second phase from Agargaon to Motijheel part, the Bangabandhu Tunnel, the Dhaka-Banga-Jashore rail line (Partial), the Dhaka airport third terminal (Partial), the Chattogram-Cox’s bazar rail line, the Khulna-Mongla rail line at total cost of around 140960.00 crores. The proposed projects need more skilled and efficient manpower. The rail projects alone require over three thousands employees to operate.

However, the employment rate is very low among educated graduates. Bangladesh has the highest number of unemployed graduates in South Asia. The sixth census 2022 that shows the country population is 16.51 crore excluding the expatriates. Population growth rate came down to 1.22 per cent in 2022 from 2.88 percent in 1981. Growing participation of female labor in development activities means lower population growth and fewer babies.

The picture of current labor force delineated in the latest Population and Housing Census that showed 65.6 percent of the population of 16.51 crore is of working age population from 15 years to 64 years age but Bangladesh Bureau Of Statistic’s literacy Assessment Survey 2023 report reads around 40 percent of adults in Bangladesh aged 15 years and above are still illiterate. Literacy survey mainly focuses on anyone who can read, understand, interpret, communicate, and count verbally and in writing is considered literate.

It is assumed that the unemployment rate in Bangladesh is 24-25 percent although the unemployment rate has come down to 3.6 percent from 4.20 percent. According to labor force survey 2022 that shows Bangladesh agriculture continues to be the main source of employment in 2022 the sector accounted for 40.6 percent of employment, the manufacturing sector is 39.0 percent and the service sector is 20.4 percent.

Alarming bell is ringing in the skilled manpower sector that vindicates increasing number of foreigners’ work permit in various sector of Bangladesh. About 15128 foreign skilled people from 106 countries are working in garments and textile, IT, banking sector. In fact, it is shrinking the employment opportunity for domestic workers. We need to plug this loophole by developing our human resource to reap the benefit of demographic dividend.
Now come to the very subject of human resource development viz-a-viz employment creation among university graduates who are getting increasingly unemployed and turning into family liabilities also an important part of our demographic dividend.

Nowadays our education and subjective knowledge are not completely matching with the ever increasing demand of tech-savvy industry. Some structural unemployment problems prevail in our labor force. In the age of free market economy and 4th industrial revolution era, technology is the heart of economic development. AI is replacing human brain, society now heavily depends on capital intensive investment leaving work force aside. To keep pace with the technological advancement human resource needs to be upgraded and equipped with sophisticated knowledge. Market oriented education and curriculum is the time befitting demand. We need to emphasis on “human capital” the knowledge education, training, skills and expertise of employees.

Bangladesh should build skilled human resource to grab the demographic dividend and have the successful graduation from the least developing country (LDC) in 2026. It needs fulfilling the criteria based on per capita income, human asset index and economic vulnerability index. By taking pragmatic decision and putting emphasis on market oriented education, we will be able to prove we have a dream to be true and light must come.

(The writer is Deputy Manager, Gas Transmission Company Ltd).