After much speculation, finally an employment related central database is being created in the country. And, an ‘employment directorate’ is being formed for the first time to create the database.
Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal highlighted this issue in the budget speech of FY 2022-23.
There will be all types of employment-related information on the central database including creation of new job opportunities for the unemployed, education and training. Work is underway to form the employment directorate.
The finance minister said, government activities to eradicate of child labour and to ensure the rights or women labourers will be accelerated.
It has been learnt from the labour and employment ministry sources that the data based will have information on how many vacant posts there are in a sector and what is the state of employment in the country and so on.
The nature of work is changing in the backdrop of the fourth industrial revolution. The directorate of employment research the various opportunities will open up in these circumstances.
Creating laws and regulations on labour issues, that is, the main of the labour and employment ministry, will focus on workers and industry owners.
There has been no significant work on creating employment up until now. The new directorate will emphasise business expansion through the creation of employment.
Like other directorates, the chief executive of the employment directorate will be a director general. The head office of the directorate will be located in Dhaka.
Initially, the directorate will have regional offices in all eight divisions. Eight training centres will also be set up at the divisional level. Later, offices will be established at the district level too.
During the budget speech the finance minister said that according to the national action plan on the labour sector 2021-26, factory inspection is continuing in order to identify risk factors in factories and to include them in the labour inspection action plan.
He has accordingly proposed an allocation of Tk 3.57 billion in FY 2022-23 with the aim of speeding up the economy using the country’s capable labour force.
The finance minister said, increasing the productivity will ensure the enhancement of workers' actual wages, which in turn will improve their living standards. With this goal, the government has laid special emphasis on skill development.
Considering the present and future demands of industry and trade, till now the government has provided training to near about 500 thousand people through the ‘Skills for Employment Investment Programme (SEIP) in order to develop workers’ skills, he added.
The minister further added the SEIP project is playing a vital role in developing the country’s human resources and their skills by running activities on issues like enhancing the capability of the training institutes, improving the quality of training, creating expert trainers, providing international certificates etc. as well.
Being inspired by the success of this project and considering the challenges of the fourth industrial revolution, the government has taken initiative for a more result based training project, so that alongside surviving in the competitive market updated skills can be ensured for the industrial workers, the finance minister said during the budget session.
He said, in order to fully start the activities of ‘National Human Resource Development Fund’ which, was formed with the view of ensuring funding in skill development trainings, permanent recruiting process of manpower has begun.
National Skills Development Authority (NSDA) has begun the construction of national skills portal as well as formation and implementation of national skills development policy, the minister added then.