BANGLADESH Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) and the government will run a skill development programme to be funded by the Asian Development Bank. Under the programme as initiated by the Ministry of Finance it will train upto 1.5 million people including workers and entrepreneurs to raise their productivity and managerial capacity in public and private sectors. It aims at raising people’s income and to save the country’s foreign currency that is now paid out to and repatriated by foreign skilled work force engaged in various plants and factories in want of similarly skilled manpower locally.
A news report in a national daily on Wednesday said that the ministry estimated the cost of the project at $1.0 billion for five years and the government would contribute $200 million. Under the training programme 2.6 lakh people would be trained by 2017 in the first phase and 70 per cent of them would be provided with gainful jobs including the garment sector. Training institutions in both public and private sectors like Department of Technical Education, Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training, BGMEA, Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association and some other non-government organizations would run the training. BGMEA sources confirmed that they would train 43,000 people and in fact training of 1,350 mid and entry-level garment sector employees has already started.
Needless to say it is a highly appreciable initiative on the part of the government with private sector involvement to develop the skills of our work force and people at managerial level to improve their productivity and the quality of their produce in different sectors of the economy. For too long, Bangladesh has to rely on external skilled manpower from abroad to work in many economic sub-sectors and as per some estimates the country is now losing around US$ 4.0 billion annually to pay out them. As the size of the economy is rapidly increasing and the need for skilled manpower is growing on daily basis, the launching of the programme appears to have come at the very right time. The rapid employment generator sectors now include infrastructure, power and telecom and ICT sectors, in addition to the rapidly growing textile and garment sectors. The country is currently achieving higher growth and it must have skilled manpower support to acquire the capacity to run it and sustain the upward growth.
We are living in a globalized world with intense competition for business to enter the global market and stay competitive. It requires huge trained work force and managerial capacity to meet the global standard. The new initiative would definitely open a new chapter to train up workers. But it must see expansion both in terms of number as well as in their higher productivity outreach over time.
