Badrul Ahsan
The government has allocated Tk 1.40 billion to set up 35 technical training institutes across the country aiming to achieve a significant growth in manpower export, officials said.
With the fund, five marine training institutes and 30 technical training institutes would be established in 35 districts of the country.
According to the plan, the government would train up some 39,555 unskilled people of the country in 12 categories every year.
The categories are marine technology (ship building, ship driving and engine mechanism), civil construction, welding and fabrication, electrical, electronics, garments, computer operation, automotive, house keeping, architectural drafting with auto-CAD, machine tools operation and related subjects.
“Thanks to the initiative, I believe, we will be able to achieve a significant development in manpower export very soon,” said Minister for Expatriate Welfare and Overseas Employment, Mosharraf Hossain.
Mr Hossain said his ministry together with Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET) and Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA) has been working to explore new markets and have found immense demand of expert manpower.
“According to our findings, we are hopeful that the export of manpower might increase up to 50 per cent immediately,” he added.
“There prevails massive demand for both skilled and un-skilled workers in the overseas markets and through the new training programmes, we would be able to fulfil the demand of both,” Mosarraf added further.
Meanwhile Secretary, Ministry of Expatriate Welfare and Overseas Employment, Jafar Ahmed said, “The training programmes would also fulfil the demand for skilled manpower at home as the country is facing an acute shortage of experts in different sectors especially in marine technology.”
President of BAIRA Abul Bashar said, “There is immense demand of expert labourers abroad, but due to shortage of sufficient training facilities, we cannot avail the opportunities offered by different countries.”
“The new initiatives of training up people would undoubtedly boost up manpower export as well as remittance earning”.
Mr Bashar also said a skilled worker earns about three times that of an un-skilled one.
According to the statistics of BMET, Bangladesh has exported around 7.5 million manpower to different destinations across the world since 1976. Of them 52.63 per cent are less skilled.
The BMET statistics also shows that the country earned Tk 11 billion through manpower export in the last fiscal year.
