A daylong seminar styled “Competence and Awareness for Overseas Employment” at the Paba Upazila Parishad Conference Hall on Wednesday emphasized the need for competence and awareness for strengthening overseas employment.
Competence, together with adequate awareness, can be the vital means of strengthening the overseas employment sector which is very important for boosting the country’s foreign remittance.
Overseas workers contribute a lot to socio-economic development of the region and the country as well through sending foreign remittance. So, all job-oriented migrations must be safe and legal.
Upazila Parishad hosted the seminar in association with Expatriate Welfare and Overseas Employment through maintaining social distancing and following other safety precautions amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
Upazila Chairman Monsur Ali and its Vice-chairmen Arzia Begum and Wazed Ali Khan and Upazila Health and Family Welfare Officer Dr Rabeya Bashri addressed the seminar as focal persons with Upazila Nirbahi Officer Shimul Akter in the chair.
Assistant Director of District Employment and Manpower Office Abdul Hannan gave an overview of the region’s overseas employment while presenting his multimedia presentation.
He said around 4,500 people, both male and female, from Rajshahi district have got jobs abroad including the Middle East countries last year.
In the past, people were sent abroad after receiving a six-month training on general electronics, architectural drafting with AutoCAD, dress-making and embroidery, dyeing, printing and block boutique, fruit processing and preservation.
Abdul Hannan said various technical and vocational educational institutions including Technical Training Centre (TTC) and Women Technical Training Centre are imparting training on unemployed people for making them competent in various productive fields including overseas employment.
Various time-fitting measures have been taken to enhance overseas employment as per the Prime Minister’s direction of arranging overseas employment for 1,000 skilled workers from every upazila every year on an average.
“We provided many women who intended to go abroad with different training, including vocational and housekeeping, and many of them got jobs,” he added.
The Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training under the ministry has been extending support to the training program.
In his remarks, Upazila Chairman Monsur Ali described the government’s decision to promote remittance inflow as significant through exporting manpower legally and urged the officials concerned to make people more aware about going to overseas markets legally.
He added that the present government is working to generate skilled manpower as they can earn more remittance than that of the unskilled ones and urged the authorities concerned to make sure that TTCs can generate skilled workforce.