The New Nation
There are areas where the government is duly
expected to play a bigger role or predominant role to hasten
productivity and economic growth. This is the area of skill development
to create a wide range skills in the country's workforce to enhance
employment prospects, either institutional or self-employment, or to
improve production capacities. But in turn can work as powerful
catalysts for eocnomic growth.
Government's ample spending for skill development is all the more
necessary because private sectors may prefer not to invest in this area
out of a consideration of low profits. The other very important
consideration of high costs of skill training under the private sector
is also likely to exclude most seekers of such training on the ground
of their inability to pay for the training. Thus, government's role as
a skill trainer assumes great importance in a country like Bangladesh.
Bangladesh appears to have scored some modest gains as shown in the
last released human development report on South Asia released. But the
rate of progress seems well below what is desired or necessary that
creates the imperative for greater skill training of the workforce
under governmental auspices.
Presently, opportunities for skill training or vocational training
provided by the government are limited to the country's small number of
polytechnics and some programmes under the ministry of youth. But these
are inadequate compared to the requirement and calls for much expansion
of such training facilities and programmes. The expansion of skill
training activities may be looked upon as gainful activities by the
government if these are conducted with some vision.
Such a model of skill training will serve several objectives. First of
all, young persons in a far bigger number will be able to train easily
as they will not be frustrated by the relatively higher costs of
private training. The skilled ones coming out of government training
institutions will form a bigger pool of the trained workforce to
undertake various economic activities. The number of the
employed—institutionally employed as well as the self employed—will
rise notably. Training will also likely improve productivity per
worker. The economy in a variety of ways may benefit from the
availability of a well trained workforce and government would be
investing in a highly prospective field and also getting returns from
its investments
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