The Steering Committee on Leveraging ICT for Growth, Employment and Governance (LICT) Project suggested 34,000 world-class IT professionals be developed to meet the demand for skilled manpower of local and international IT industries.
The suggestion came at a meeting of the steering committee held at the conference room of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Division on Tuesday with ICT Secretary N I Khan in the chair.
LICT Project Director Md. Rezaul Karim informed the meeting of the actions taken so far for implementation of the project including developing 4,000 Fast Track Future IT Leaders (FTFLs) out of the 34,000 IT professionals.
The meeting also suggested that course curriculum for training be of international standard for providing high-end training to Bangladeshi youths.
“This is the high time to go for high-end training and develop world-class IT professionals as thousands of IT literate people are being developed each year due to various public and private initiatives,” N I khan told the meeting. He said the government has launched computer programmes of training, Freelancers to Entrepreneurs, and Entrepreneurs to Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) respectively at union, upazila and district levels to create IT professionals. N I Khan said even country’s 4516 Union Information Services Centers (UISCs) are providing basic computer training to nearly 50 thousand people each year at grassroots level and the Learning and Earning Programme has been developing a significant number of freelancers and entrepreneurs giving them basic IT training.
The meeting discussed the IT trainers training and formation of forum on IT, ITES, BPO, animation, embedded system and the progress of floating tenders for different components of the project.
Steering committee members including Additional Secretary of Economic Relations Division (ERD) Arastha Khan, Finance Division Director General Zahidul Huq, Bangladesh Computer Samity (BCS) President Mostafa Jabbar, Bangladesh Association of Software Information and Services (BASIS) Shamim Ahsan, Bangladesh Association of Call Center Outsourcing BACCO) President Hamidul Huq were present at the meeting.
The World Bank is providing 70 million US dollar to the LICT project for implementing it within five years. The project was launched in January last year.
