BSS :
President M Abdul Hamid asked all concerned authorities to redesign the country’s higher education system for minimizing skill gaps as preparedness for upcoming industrial revolution.
“We need to identify the skill gaps and redesign the higher education system rapidly to cope with the global competition,” the President said as he virtually opened a two-day ‘International Conference on the 4th Industrial Revolution and Beyond (IC4IR) – 2021′ held on Friday at Bangabandhu International Conference Centre (BICC) in Dhaka. He expected that the conference would draw experts’ suggestions and recommendations for the universities to produce skilled manpower to meet domestic and global job market demand.
Addressing the event from Bangabhaban, the President said the universities have to strengthen the academia-industry linkage as the incumbent government in the meantime enhanced budget for research and innovation.
“Although we are doing increasingly better in agriculture, automation, software development, freelancing and many other sectors, we have to put more emphasis on the university rankings in the international context,” Abdul Hamid suggested. He thanked the UGC authority and other relevant stakeholders for arranging a two-day IC4RB-2021 as part of the two historic mega events – Bangabandhu’s birth centenary and Bangladesh Independence’s Golden Jubilee celebrations. In line with Bangabandhu’s dream of a ‘Sonar Bangla’ – a hunger and corruption free, prosperous Bangladesh, Abdul Hamid said, “Bearing the same philosophy in mind at present, Bangabandhu’s dream has been transformed into ‘Digital Bangladesh’ under the visionary leadership of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her ICT Adviser Sajeeb Wajed Joy.”
President Abdul Hamid called upon all to join hands with everyone to embrace the 4IR or Industry 4.0 robustly as “It is now the reality and we can’t deny it any more. It is the time to change the whole landscape of how we do feel, how we do work, how we do live, how we do travel . . . and so on.” The first revolution is all about steam engine, the second revolution is about 8electricity, the third is about internet and computer and the 4IR added Intelligence to the third Industrial Revolution and changed the whole scenario while the 4IR comes up with new challenges replacing traditional jobs with automation, the President mentioned. He said the Artificial Intelligence is being used for predicting business futures, robots are being used in the garments industry and shopping centers, Machine Learning is being used for simulation and Internet of Things (IoT) are being used in smart agriculture.
