While presiding over the graduation ceremony of National Defence Course and Armed Forces War Course 2023, held at Mirpur's National Defence College (NDC) on Sunday - President Mohammed Shahabuddin underscored the importance of building the country's manpower sector as efficient and smart, so to keep pace with rapid expansion and development of ICT.
We welcome his call as well as in full agreement with it.
However, pinpointing on the role of civil and military bureaucracy in this regard, he said the present government is committed to build Bangladesh in the likes of "Sonar Bangla" as envisioned by Father of the Nation, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
Needs be mentioned, the government has already set a target to build a "Smart Bangladesh" by 2041. A number of initiatives have been launched in this regard.
However, About 10 million Bangladeshis are working abroad in different countries of the world. Around 7.6 million of our expat workforce has no job training and the remaining have received hardly any training of the four categories of technical education, languages, computers, and driving. Among expat Bangladeshis, the number of doctors, engineers, teachers and degree holders in vocational education is relatively less.
Regular and innovative developments in technology have brought about revolutionary changes in the economic, political and social structures of the entire world. And the global value of technical know-how is markedly understandable. Thus, it is easy to increase the inward remittance from the manpower sector several times.
In particular, re-skilling, up-skilling and de-skilling methods should be kept in due consideration. Existing learning programmes should be complimented by other digital-based systems, such as e-learning and online learning systems. That said - educational programmes should be designed to develop technically skilled and sound manpower.
For instance, Japan fared well in the face of all odds in post-war years by converting its population into skilled manpower. This example from Japan is most relevant to us. If we can convert the vast young population of Bangladesh into skilled resources, it is not impossible for us to become a developed country. Moreover, we have to replicate the technical education model of different countries including Germany, Singapore, Australia, China, South Korea, and Malaysia. The technical education rate in Germany is 73 percent. It is necessary to adopt a master plan to raise the education rate to at least 60 percent in the country. Countries like Malaysia, Singapore and China have developed technical education at the root of their development.
In conclusion, we believe courses organized by NDC would equip all future participants with required knowledge in the fields of policy-making, security, combat strategy and development, thus guiding participants to chart their course in the right direction - aim of which should be to contribute in national development.
