National Skills Development Authority (NSDA) is working to formulate the national action plan for reducing the skills gap of the country’s people aimed at boosting economic growth.
In this regard, NSDA organised a daylong workshop, titled ‘Formulating the National Action Plan for Skills Development’ at Pan Pacific Sonargaon hotel in the city on Sunday.
Prime Minister’s Private Industry and Investment Adviser Salman Fazlur Rahman inaugurated the workshop as the chief guest while Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister Md Nojibur Rahman and Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment Secretary Md Selim Reza attended the inaugural session as special guests. Executive Chairman (Secretary) of the NSDA Md Faruque Hossain chaired the programme.
Salman F Rahman said Bangladesh should utilise the demographic dividend through raising skills of its large manpower where the majority of the population is young.
He said the present government, under the dynamic leadership of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, has undertaken a number of initiatives for boosting the economic growth and formation of NSDA.
Rahman mentioned that the government is giving the highest priority to ICT after RMG for mobilizing higher income as remittance as well as boost domestic industry and for this union growth centres have been established bringing 6,000 union parishads under the optical fiber network, which is the highest among countries around the globe.
Pointing to growing challenges for employment for Fourth Industrial Revelation, he said, “We have to design skills programmes keeping the industry need-based demands.”
Nojibur Rahman said the government has formed Human Resource Development Fund and the premier has given approval on the policy for the fund. At the same time, NSDA is formulating National Action Plan for Skills Development, he added.
In his introductory speech, Faruque Hossain said the national action plan on skills development is being formulated for the next five years aiming to ensure compliance in national skills trainings provided by public and private training institutes across the country. As mandated under the National Skills Development Authority Act-2018, the NSDA is going to formulate an action plan of national skills for taking ahead Bangladesh’s skills development programmes in an appropriate way for meeting the demand of the national as well as international jobs market, he added.
Speakers at the workshop observed that skills gap is a major issue in some of the key economic sectors of Bangladesh. Though 2.2 million young people enter into the job market every year, a majority of them remain unemployed or get engaged in low-income jobs at home and abroad due to lack of proper skills as they fail to meet the needs of the job markets, they added.
They mentioned that the domestic skilled labour demand will be 72.41 million by 2020 with 2.91 million in agro-food, 4.42 million in construction and 5.98 million in RMG in spite the fact that skills gap is the highest in agro-food sector followed by RMG.
