Bangladesh is now having a large young population. The total labor force of Bangladesh was 61.4 million in 2015, a 24.24% increase from 49.5 million in 2005-2015. The country gains an average of approximately 2 million new entrants in work force annually. Out of two million of the new entrants, only 5% receive formal training before entering in to the labor market.
The country requires a number of initiatives to enhance the capacity of the new entrants through skills training so that a portion of two million new entrants receive training before going to the job market. This will, in turn, enable the country to transform its population into productive human resources.
In case of Bangladesh, it is obvious that inflows of remittance could have been larger if the workers were better skilled, indicating the necessity of skills development programs. Currently, more than seven million Bangladeshi workers are working abroad of which 31% are skilled, 14% are semi-skilled, 2% are professional and 52% are less-skilled. The Government’s goal is to raise the share of overseas employment of skilled labor from 31% to 50% by 2030.
Technical and Vocational Education and Training-TVET is the one of the effective approaches to change the country’s development scenario through skill training as it is considered as driving force to make unemployed people as human resources. IMI has been offering vocational training for the underprivileged youths since the year 2008.
IMI-TVET institute has introduced some innovative and market driven trades and occupations which attracted the youths once who were unemployed and considered as a burden to the society. With the aim of human capital development, IMI has been providing skills training through its technical institutes. From this institute, more than 8,000 unemployed youths have completed training and entered into job market in their respective occupations. Due to pandemic COVID-19 and countrywide lockdown, the institute could train up only 250 youth in 2020 from January to March 2020. Most of them were from Electrical Installation and maintenance, Driving, Computer operation and SMO occupations. It is to be mentioned that the institute has affiliated by Bangladesh Technical Education Board-BTEB and National Skills Development Authority-NSDA. With the aim to give a voice to the less privileged youth, IMI wants to expand these services through developing partnership with institutional donor agencies as well as relevant factories and companies.Bangladesh is a country with the population of about 160 mln. and the labour force being increased day by day. According to the Labour Force Survey, the labour force consists of about five crore people. More than 80 percent of the labour force are in the informal sector; hardly 10 to 15 percent are in the formal sector. On top of it all, every year about 2 million people are being added to the labour force. But we don’t have enough jobs for all of them. A huge portion of this labour force remains underemployed. One of the main reasons is skills gap arising out of the mismatch between the requirements of the industries and the supply of skills in the market. And in the future, this skills gap is likely to widen because of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (automation, robotics, artificial intelligence, new technologies). So for Bangladesh, this presents a double-edged sword: as it is, we are working with low tech and then there is the problem of new technologies because of which many in the workforce are going to be displaced. Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) is indispensable the development of human capital of this country. Skilling/ upskilling/re-skilling the people is of utmost importance for quality technical education based on market demands. & l Education and Training (TVET)
The Technical & Vocational Education & Training (TVET) sector of IMPACT INITIATIVE (IMI) has been playing a significant role in the field of skills development activities in Bangladesh. Since 2008, IMI has been offering variety of livelihood skills development training courses through vocational training institutes. We are facilitating eight different courses through TVET institutions which are affiliated and accredited as Registered Training Organization (RTO) from Bangladesh Technical Education Board (BTEB) and National Skills Development Authority-NSDA and implementing CBT&A and NTVQF system.
However, total enrolment capacity of trainees is 1260 in a year. In TVET, we follow the IMI’s gender policy and child protection policy and consider inclusion of differently able persons.
The TVET programme components include:
- Technical and vocational skills training
- Life skills training
- Employment support service
- Market linkage support for self-employment
- Social mobilization to increase social acceptability of trade skills
- Training resource development
Target group of skills development training:
- Unemployed and underemployed adolescents and youths
- Unskilled labor
- Small & medium entrepreneurs
- Aspirant and returnee migrant workers
- School drop-outs and children engaged in hazardous works.