A polytechnic institute at Sunamganj

NOTICEABLE progress has been achieved in our education sector particularly in technical and professional fields. The country, however, is lagging behind in technically skilled workforce. Number of graduates in general education is increasing at a progressive rate, but many of these graduates remain unemployed for a long time. Although educated graduates remain unemployed, a lot of foreign technical people are employed in our industries as technical staff which are unavailable in the country.

Japan had a similar situation and it gave increased emphasis on short term technical education nationwide to rebuild the war ravaged economy after World War II. Eventually Japan turned around from a country full of crisis to a developed one. A huge number of youths in Bangladesh are going to be added to our workforce in next 10 to 15 years. Employment generation for this large number of young people is a challenging job and only technical education can help cope up with this challenge and develop the country faster. 

The shortage of technically educated workforce would be higher in future if more technical institutions are not set up in the public sector, as private sector is not much interested to come forward to share the burden. Successive governments had acknowledged the problem but did not take enough initiatives to address it. For example, Sunamganj is a district that does not have a full-fledged technical education institute. Setting up a polytechnic institution here for imparting engineering education would be a great help. 

Md. Ashraf Hossain

PrincePlaza

Madhabazar, Sunamgjanj.