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EU envoy praises improved skills building in Bangladesh

Star Business Desk
ILO William Hanna, EU ambassador to Bangladesh, along with Srinivas Reddy, country director for ILO Bangladesh, and Babar Ali, director for planning and development at the Directorate of Technical Education, hands a certificate to one of the 20 persons who recently completed skilled apprenticeships, at a programme on Saturday.
EVEN amongst the challenges that Bangladesh is facing, the government of the country, together with industry, is making real progress in the skills development sector, EU Ambassador to Bangladesh William Hanna said on Saturday.
"Just three years ago, there were only 98 apprentices registered under the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training."
Introducing apprenticeships and their up scaling, more than 8,000 now, has been a key initiative of the technical and vocational education and training reform project, supported by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and funded by the European Union (EU), he said.
He spoke at a programme to hand over certificates to a group of apprentices from across Bangladesh who recently completed skilled apprenticeships under the two major programmes boosting apprenticeships.
The programmes include Centre of
Excellence for Leather (GOEL), graduating 6000 apprentices in the leather sector; and a partnership between UNICEF, Brae and the ILO, graduating 2,000 apprentices in a number of trades, with another 3,000 starting in 2014.
"In developing countries, skills are the key to reducing poverty. Skills mean decent jobs and decent income," the ambassador said.
Skilled workers increase the quality and competitiveness of products made in Bangladesh and help enterprises and the economy grow as a whole, he said.
"That is why skills development is on top of the development agendas of both the EU and Bangladesh."
The government of Bangladesh along with the ILO and the EU has been working since 2008 to improve the skills development system in the country.
A recently-released report by the Economist Intelligence Unit revealed that South Asia is currently lacking 96 million of the 100 million trainees currently required to meet the requirements for continued economic growth.
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The report estimated that one million additional skills training places are needed every month for the next eight years in order to avoid an unsustainable rise in unemployment and recession.
One of the key initiatives of improving the skills development system has been improving the apprenticeship system and introducing the concept of dual apprenticeships, where learning happens in both training institutions and in workplaces.
Another change is that dual apprenticeships are designed so that apprentices can directly enter jobs upon graduation. Industry sectors across Bangladesh are successfully using and up scaling these models.
"I am proud to congratulate a diverse group of people on attaining with high quality skills for employment," said Country Director for ILO Bangladesh
Srinivas Reddy.
"The improvements that are being made to the skills development system here in Bangladesh are making it possible for everyone in the country to access training, including females apprentices in non-traditional trades, persons with disabilities and people with low levels of education."
This has been made possible by partnerships between industry and government training institutions, the adoption of gender-responsive, flexible training methods and incorporating basic literacy and numeracy into skills, Reddy said.
"Learning skills means you have a much better chance of a job straight away, which is important especially if you do not live in Dhaka and there are few opportunities," apprentice Amina Akhter from Tangail said.