The National Skills Development Authority (NSDA), under the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), has launched ‘National Skills Competition’ across the country to facilitate development and enhancement of skills of the country’s large workforce at all trades to global standards.
The competition was launched at a function at Hotel Renaissance in the city on Saturday night, said a press release on Sunday.
Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal inaugurated the competition as the chief guest while Prime Minister’s Private Industry and Investment Adviser Salman Fazlur Rahman delivered speech as the special guest.
Asian Development Bank (ADB) Country Director Manmohan Parkash spoke as the guest of honour while Secretary of the PMO Md Tofazzel Hossain Miah presided over the programme and delivered concluding speech.
Executive Chairman of the NSDA Md Faruque Hossain delivered vote of thanks.
Speaking at the event, Mustafa Kamal said the government has undertaken different projects to develop skills of the country’s youths marking the celebration of birth centenary of the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
“Though Bangladesh is the host country, the birth centenary will be celebrated all over the world, which is rare,” he added.
The finance minister said many organisations are providing training to develop skills and the workers of the country are very skilled in many fields.
However, he said, the country has to bring all people under skill.
Salman Fazlur Rahman said skills development of the country’s manpower is essential to face the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR). “Bangladesh is moving forward. If we can make country’s young generation skilled, we can overcome the challenges of 4IR and we can also take the opportunities of the industrial revolution,” he added.
Manmohan Parkash said Bangladesh has to achieve double-digit growth for sustaining the country’s development. “Education, especially technical education, is very essential for sustaining the country’s development to long time,” he added.
Faruque Hossain said the NSDA is providing skills enhancement training to the country’s workforce through regulating skills training institutes by designing, planning and approving training and skills module, setting standards of skills, creating national-level awareness through various activities at central, divisional, district and upazila levels and also participating at events, programs and competitions at international arena.
The competition will create an opportunity for the young segment of the population to enhance their skills, and up-skill and re-skill for making them more capable to explore jobs both at home and abroad, he added.
The NSDA chief said the authority is going to observe the birth centenary of the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman by organizing ‘Divisional and National Skills Competition’ as a part of the communication and mobilization activities of NSDA for disseminating and popularizing skills training in Bangladesh.
“Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has already given her kind consent to organize the competition to be held in two phases. In the first phase, divisional competition will be held in eight divisional headquarters in 20 (twenty) trades. The winners will finally compete in the National Skills Competition, title ‘Bangabandhu Skills Prize’ to be held in the city,” he added, reports BSS.