Tech Jobs for Bangladeshis Narrowing
Jannatul Islam:>>>
Employment opportunities for Bangladeshis in the field of technology have reportedly been narrowed in both domestic and international arenas in recent years for various reasons, including ‘lack of skilled workforce’.
Sources said major global outsourcing firms have not been approving any profile of Bangladeshi nationals for the last several months while two multinational tech companies have wound up their operations in Bangladesh.
Besides, around 1,100 Bangladeshi workers, including 600 engineers, have become jobless in the last one year as Korea-based electronic company Samsung and Swedish telecommunication company Ericsson have cut jobs.
Multinational tech firms — Accenture and internet-based business platform Ekhanei dotcom — have shut down their operations in Bangladesh for ‘failure to make profit’.
Major online market places — Upwork and Freelancer.com — have not been approving any profile from Bangladesh due to registration of unskilled profiles from the country on a large scale.Expert and industry insiders observed that the technology sector’s growth is not satisfactory as most of the computer graduates produced by the universities are not getting suitable jobs.
They also said skill-based training programme can never support the sustainable growth in the sector without producing ‘good graduates’ from the computer faculties of local universities.
About the present downward trend of work opportunities in technology sector, Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services (BASIS) President Mustafa Jabbar said ‘unskilled workforce’ is being produced due to lack of coordination between academy and industrial sector.
“All of us are working separately to produce human resources in technology sector. But there is a lack of coordination between industry and academy.
For example, we are offering six months training programme on different professional’s courses at BASIS.
When we go for industry attachments, the trade bodies show little interest. We think that it is not possible to produce human resources in any sector without industrial coordination,” Mustafa Jabbar told the daily sun.
Mustafa, inventor of first Bengali typing software Bijoy, also recommended strengthening academic programme at graduation level to produce ‘sufficient’ graduates from computer science and engineering faculty so that they can lead the local market.
Recently, the ICT division of the government has taken a specialised programme to attract foreign companies in the country.
Online job searching platform BDjobs.com chief executive officer Fahim Mashroor thinks most of the technology companies are hardly making profit. Besides, the companies do not find ‘skilled’ human resources to deal world-standard tasks, he said.
“We are saying that local tech workers are earning millions of dollars. That’s the truth but there is no research and development for the sector. So, someone is saying that the earning of the sector is $200 million while another person is saying that the earning is $700 million. The original figure still remains unknown,” Fahim Mashroor told the daily sun.
The technology expert also pointed out that the increasing number of ‘foreign officials’ at tech firms are creating difficult situations for Bangladeshi co-workers.
Regarding the online workplaces, Bangladeshi online workstation Belancer chief executive officer Shofiul Alam said although Bangladesh has achieved the second largest position as supplier of online workers in the world, the major marketplaces have downgraded Bangladeshi profile for signing up without required skills.
“Around 80 percent shares of the global online market places are acquired by two giants of Upwork and Freelancer.com which are not approving works for Bangladeshis due to unskilled profiles,” Shofiul said, adding that the government should support local market places.
