While training and development has fir long been treated as a clich茅, in the parlance of management literature, the terms have not lost their lustre yet in terms of market demand and supply chain of skilled labour between the potential sending and receiving countries of expatriate workers. Even this time of Industrial Revolution 4.0, some businesses such as shipbuilding, driving and building construction heavily rely on the human skills and competence due mainly to the possible unreliable nature of services if replaced by artificial intelligence generative technology and the sky-rocketing cost involved.
That is why 鈥榯raining鈥� has got a newer version to be addressed as 鈥榣earning鈥� 鈥� to render it more of a personal approach of a man or woman competing on a job market aiming at individual attainment of employability. In other words, training is no more a giver-receiver affairs. It is a self-learning and development effort. As such, it has become a handy, online tool to undertake a test of one鈥檚 level of learning, not to be recognised as a scholar or member of the intelligentsia but to get him or her employed in a certain job. It is now not trainer-trainee approach any more. It is a facilitator-learner environment which many organisations offer to be taken online, anytime, off time.
But in this debatable scenario, skills are the most sought after and the most envied quality to have by both the employer and the employee. One study has shown that because of this unmatched, unhinged gap between training facilities and their end products, all members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation are burdened with low-skilled, low-income and low-level productivity. Another study shows the narrowing down of the geographical coverage, a comparison between Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka that the worker productivity of Bangladesh is the lowest, only 8.4, while of Sri Lanka, the score is 25.
The extent of identified gap or mismatch between training and its output 鈥� preparing skilled work force for employment on domestic and international labour markets 鈥� varies across countries. So is the rate of employability of trained individuals. It is experienced that a unified, well-planned system in this regard witnesses better results. For an example, the Philippines is a success story in terms of the number of workers trained and employed overseas with higher wages, acceptance level and repute. It is because, a good number of dedicated institutions are established and developed through evolution and exercises over the decades there where technical education and skills development authority established in 1994 has been on the lead.
Another example of the best practices in technical and vocational education and training is Singapore where government programmes such as SkillsFuture Singapore and Workforce Singapore are driving the young population towards 100 per cent employability and the transformation of local work force continually upskilling them to stay relevant for the ever-changing business demands.
Conversely, Bangladesh has recently been able to develop a body, the National Skills Development Authority, to cater the training needs of a huge workable population. It has developed a national qualification framework called Bangladesh National Qualification Framework that has identified and defined various levels of competence to be achieved by our work force as per international practice.
Apart from labelling and defining different levels of skills, the framework has also a provision for learners in certain trades to undertake internship described as industry attachment. But it is learnt that the industry associations are unwilling to induct the trainees even with diploma certificates in sectors such as apparel to their production plants because of a gulf of difference between what they expect from the interns to have learnt during their academic courses and what is the technology and practical methods followed down the floor level production lines. As such, the effective nexus between businesses and training institutes are obviously under question.
The widening gap between businesses and training institutes has also been highlighted in the European Union-funded TVET Graduate Tracer Study Report published by Directorate of Technical Education Bangladesh in 2021. Undertaking a study on 1,792 graduates from five polytechnic institutes, it found that the employment rate is about 11 per cent of the total SSC (Vocational) graduates who participated in the tracer study, the rate is 23 per cent for HSC (Vocational) graduates and 39 per cent for the diploma graduates. Moreover, of the 1,792 graduates who participated in the tracer study, 40 per cent were not in education, employment or training at the time of the study which was an abuse or misuse of the resources, time and efforts incurred by the institutes and the graduates concerned. However, employers, graduates and ongoing students have raised concern about the syllabus and curriculum which do not provide clear objectives and are not aligned with the changing demand of the industries. The instructors have noted that joint collaboration and partnership the institutes and industries is needed, allowing the graduates to access modern technology of the industry.
More emphasis should be given on developing practical skills in relevant technologies and good practices like industrial internship should be expanded. Apart from the traditional job markets for Bangladeshi workers like Gulf countries, Bangladesh has immense potential to send skilled workers to the international market, especially in South Asian countries such as Japan, South Korea and Singapore. A study shows that by 2030 and beyond, only Japan would be hiring skilled workers in care-giving, shipbuilding and driving sector in millions. To penetrate the market there, we need to invest handsomely in training the youths, giving special thrust in Japanese language learning. Because, evidence-based research shows that due to lower pass rate in the Japanese language proficiency test, Bangladeshi trainees do not qualify to get employment on the Japanese market. For an example, IM Japan under a memorandum signed by the expatriates鈥� welfare and overseas employment ministry in 2017 has succeeded sending only 675 individuals till date.
It has been learnt that lack of language proficiency and required skills for taking daily care of babies and elderly citizen in Japan are two reasons for which Bangladesh is lagging behind to tap the huge employment sector there. It is also experienced that because of lack of competent trainers in Japanese language, hundreds of thousands of trainees in Japanese language fail to pass the competency test conducted by Japanese OTCs in Bangladesh. Whereas Vietnam facing a similar problem with skills development of migrant workers invited the Japanese employers to assist the Vietnamese government upskilling their people to which Japan promptly responded and now have reinvented Vietnam as a prime resourcing country for required human resources in Japanese industries.
To cater the local labour market demand, the authorities concerned can meaningfully engage private business representatives to design and conduct apprenticeship for the trainees so that a portion of the domestic market could provide employment for competent trainees passing out of TVET intuitions. For expanding Japanese and South Korean market; especially considering the potentials of Bangladeshi workers there, the authorities cannot wait but follow the Vietnam model, where the country has fruitfully used direct investment from Japan in developing training infrastructure, training curriculum and module development, instructors鈥� engagement and trainees competence test centres by entering into joint agreements and memorandums, concerted efforts of which witnessed an increased number of Vietnamese workers employed in Japan in recent years.
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Md Mukhlesur Rahman Akand is a joint secretary to the expatriates鈥� welfare and overseas employment ministry.
