Hiren Pandit: Bangladesh is committed to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 and becoming a developed country by 2041. For this, the government is creating various job opportunities for the youth. Also taking important steps to ensure specific jobs. Everyone should come forward for employment and self-employment. It is now imperative for us to do this. Transforming unemployed youth into manpower through skill development training and creating employment opportunities for them.
Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman has taken and implemented various steps to establish Bangladesh as Golden Bengal by providing youth with training in various professions and their employment. Following the footsteps of the father of the nation, the Awami League government is working tirelessly to make Bangladesh a developed country by 2041. The guidelines for our development are to become a middle-income country, to achieve the SDGs by 2030 and to build a developed, prosperous and Smart Bangladesh by 2041.
Today’s students will one day face the challenges of the fourth industrial revolution and build a Smart Bangladesh. A cost-effective, sustainable, intelligent, knowledge-based, innovative Smart Bangladesh will be built on these four main foundations: Smart Citizen, Smart Economy, Smart Government and Smart Society. According to statistics, one-fourth of the total population of the country is youth, which is around 5 crore. Various development activities are being implemented by creating employment, keeping commodity prices within purchasing power, establishing consistency between incomes, and involving the youth and youth society in the transformation and development of the country. How was Bangladesh before and how is it now?
To those who are born now, it is natural that the words of the past may seem like stories in this modern society. Because today’s Bangladesh is a role model of development in the world. Bangladesh is now a wonderful country in the world. Bangladesh is keeping pace with the developed countries of the world in terms of development progress. People’s living standards are improving. In all indicators, the country is moving forward as an indomitable Bangladesh. To build a smart Bangladesh, the government is giving importance to developing the young society as highly skilled manpower in education, knowledge, technology, and digital devices.
Due to the easy availability of the internet and smartphones, all government services are available quickly and at home. What used to take a lot of money, labor and time can now be done at home with a single click. Youth is a life force, which is the dream of Bangladesh full of endless possibilities and colorful dreams. The thoughts of the youth will be the thoughts of Bangladesh, the thoughts of opening up new horizons about Bangladesh, and the radical thoughts of the youth will be about Bangladesh.
The work of the youth will be the work of Bangladesh. All dreams should be about Bangladesh. To increase the employment of women, we need to think anew. According to the latest BBS Labor Force Survey, women’s employment has increased and their labor force participation rate is around 42 percent. But the quality of that employment is not so bright. From 2017 to 2022, women’s employment increased through self-employment in agriculture. The number of women employed in the industry has decreased. Although a large number of women joined agriculture, there was no increase in agricultural land or other productive assets per household.
The number of women employed in salaries and wages has decreased. As a result of non-increased employment in modern sectors, wages have gone down. To increase the employment of women in the industry, in consultation with large industrial owners, training should be arranged in the short term as per the skill requirement in the joint venture. Women engaged in agriculture should be encouraged to produce new products by providing inputs, marketing assistance, and information services. Women’s employment growth in urban areas has stagnated in recent years, a trend that needs to be reversed.
New strategies and activities need to be taken up with a separate focus on increasing women’s employment, which is beyond the scope of this paper. There is no way to increase quality employment without adopting policies and strategies to develop the labor-intensive modern sector as a whole and improve the quality of education. There may be some success in accelerating the growth of the economy by undertaking capital-intensive operations. However, it will not fulfill the dream of transition to quality employment for low-skilled people who depend on labor income.
Inequality in society will continue to increase. Once upon a time, the gross part of the country’s budget was used to estimate how many jobs could be created in the next year. In recent times, it has been logically avoided because most of the employment is in the private sector, which is difficult to estimate. However, it is necessary to show the calculation of how many new jobs can be created as a result of the steps taken regarding the increase in employment.
Before going into the context of what kind of development strategies can increase quality employment, it is important to mention why increasing employment has become important in Bangladesh today. Employment has played an important role in Bangladesh’s success in reducing poverty over the past few decades. The rate of poverty reduction has slowed in recent years. Income and wealth inequality have also increased. Many factors and processes are at work behind income inequality. But an important factor is declining real income from wages and salaries.
Multiple sources of government statistics show that real income from wages and salaries has fallen even in many occupations over the past 10 years. According to the BBS Labor Force Survey, employment in the industrial sector has not increased significantly over the past five years, while agriculture has increased and productivity per person employed there has declined. Here are some key aspects of what policies can be effective to increase employment. It is necessary to adopt appropriate collective policies for the expansion of labor-intensive industries and modern service sectors.
However, the benefits of employment growth as a result of these changes will have to wait. It will increase quality job opportunities in the medium term. The reasons for the lack of employment growth in the industry in recent times include the increase in capital concentration of large enterprises and the slow pace of expansion of SME enterprises. Where labor is cheap, the concentration of capital increases because of the policy of artificially cheapening capital. If this trend is not reversed, there will be a shortage of good-quality job resources.
A major reason for the high unemployment rate among general graduates is the wide gap between the type of education they have acquired and the type of qualifications that are in demand in the job market. The salary expectations among general graduates are much higher than the jobs they can get. On the other hand, many businessmen said that there is a shortage of job seekers with certain skills. The main aim of employment should be to create suitable work opportunities for the young population newly entering the labor market.
Those who drop out of educational institutions before entering college because of poverty do not want to work as agricultural laborers and do not have the capital or other skills. They need to be supported to make the job search easier. School education does not provide knowledge on how to apply or how to contact an organization to set up a new venture. For these, some institutions at the district level can be given the responsibility to play a supporting role. Working jointly with NGOs or private sector organizations can be beneficial in these areas. The youth unemployment rate will be reduced to 3.0 percent by 2028 from 10.6 percent last time.
Adequate technical training is being provided to illiterate and low-educated youth and youth. To create employment for the youth, the National Service Program will be gradually expanded to all upazilas of the country. Youth training and employment centers are being set up in every upazila to strengthen training programs at the grassroots level. Reduce the 17.8 percent of youth out of education, training, and employment to below 7 percent in the next 5 years. In the fourth industrial revolution era, polytechnic and vocational institutes are being organized by creating new technology education opportunities to exploit the developing employment opportunities at home and abroad.
More than 2 million people are rejoining the labor force in the country every year. One of the goals of the government is to create employment opportunities for all of them through the development of the industrial sector and the establishment of new industries. Cottage, small, and medium industries can create the most employment opportunities. The sector is being made stronger, well-organized, and dynamic by removing barriers, providing training for management skills, and reducing dependence on foreign human resources.
Hiren Pandit is an essayist, researcher, and columnist