Bangladesh's light engineering sector, despite its nascence, has always held a lot of promise in terms of becoming an exporting industry. In fact, earlier this year, it was stated by experts that the industry stands to earn $25 billion by exporting products to potential markets like China, the US, India, Singapore, and Japan, provided that necessary policy support was given to the sector.
However, a recent report by the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) has found that around three-fourths of workers within our light engineering and electronics sectors are mismatched in terms of their training and line of work while under-education is also quite pervasive.
For a sector as technically demanding as light engineering, it is unfathomable that such high numbers of workers are unqualified for the job as more than 60% of field workers lack the necessary education in their line of work.
It is no big secret that, as far as exports are concerned, Bangladesh has been in desperate need of a more diverse basket of products. RMG has long served as the veritable backbone of our economy, but it is simply unsustainable for any nation to rely on one or two exporting industries to stay afloat.
Which is why it is all the more tragic that promising sectors such as light engineering are constantly denied their due when it comes to policy support. And indeed it is because of lack of support that an industry can often find itself with a lack of qualified personnel as it is seen as more of an afterthought.
It is high time that this was rectified and light engineering was allowed to fulfill its ambitions as an exporting industry.
