The New Nation - Internet Edition

BSS, Dhaka

Chief Adviser Dr Fakhruddin Ahmed on Sunday directed the authorities concerned to formulate a three-year mid-term action plan to raise the number of skilled and semi-skilled workers for overseas employment.

In this respect, he also called for developing a monitoring system for implementation of such an action plan in the greater interest of the country's increased remittance income in future.

Dr Fakhruddin Ahmed gave the directive after a power-point presentation held at his office here on the overall skill development, training and overseas employment. The Chief Adviser himself took the initiative for holding this presentation.

Foreign Adviser Dr Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury, Secretary to the Chief Adviser Kazi M Aminul Islam, Press Secretary to the Chief Adviser Syed Fahim Munaim and Secretaries concerned were present on the occasion.

Briefing the newsmen after the presentation, Syed Fahim Munaim said the country had earned US dollar 6.58 billion in 2007 from the overseas employment sector and was now expecting to earn US dollar 9.00 billion this year.

According to the presentation, the target of trained manpower has been fixed at 49,000 during the current fiscal year through different training institutes under the Ministry of Expatriate Welfare and Overseas Employment.

Expressing his satisfaction over the skill development activities by different agencies, Dr Fakhruddin Ahmed asked the Ministry of Youth to lease out its unutilised technical training centers to the private sector to ensure their optimum use in this field.

Targeting overseas employment for the nurses, he suggested the authorities concerned to start work on taking some centers as model to train such hospital staffs.

The Chief Adviser called for following the model of manpower exporting countries and give incentive to the recruiting agencies to ensure more discipline in this sector.

In this respect, he asked the Bangladesh Missions abroad to explore new markets in the world arena for the country's workforce. The embassies should take up the total responsibilities in this regard, not the labour wings alone," he said.

Dr Fakhruddin Ahmed put emphasis on learning different foreign languages, which would greatly help the Bangladeshis enter the global job markets in the years to come.

Expatriate Welfare and Overseas Employment Secretary, Education Secretary, Health Secretary, Youth and Sports Secretary, Labour and Employment Secretary and high officials concerned were present.