Bangladesh's Demographic Dividend at Risk: Unemployment Crisis Looms

Lately, that advantage seems to be slipping away and its demographic dividend, its strength is getting weakened as highly polarised environment, radicalism and fundamentalism has lately taken precedence over growth.

In past two decades, its education system expanded at an unprecedented pace.

Colleges and universities proliferated, producing vast number of graduates.

A damning report published in the Business Standard, penned by a retired Army officer, puts the spotlight on high unemployment, lack of higher educational institutions and training institutions for preparing ready workforce.

It says that most students are unable to relocate to major cities and therefore enroll in local colleges or affiliated university programmes.

"Bangladesh is currently facing unemployment of nearly 2.6 million people. The situation is even more severe among graduates: nearly 885,000 degree-holders are unemployed," the report said.

The report, citing many troubling facts and figures, highlights how the situation has been on a downhill spiral for quite sometime.

"Graduate unemployment stands at around 13.5 per cent -- almost three times the national average. Technical and vocational education was meant to provide an alternative pathway, but has failed to inspire confidence. Bangladesh has nearly 7,800 technical and vocational institutions, but enrollment remains low and outcomes are poor," the report added.

It further claims that vocational education has failed to function as the strong bridge to employment it was intended to be.

Bangladesh is currently passing through a critical demographic phase.

Around 67 per cent of the population is of working age, and the dependency ratio has fallen to about 52 dependents per 100 working-age people, compared with nearly 90 in the early 1980s.

Stressing the urgency to act, it says that more than two million people enter the working-age population and demographers project that this age structure will peak between 2025 and 2035 but the country looks ill-equipped to capitalise on this manpower, thus failing to catapult the nation into big league, despite this demographic dividend.

It also cites other Asian nation's policy -- like South Korea aligning education with industrial needs, Singapore making sustained investments in vocational excellence and China absorbing millions of young workers into productive sectors.

"Their success was not driven by the sheer number of graduates but by the relevance of their skills," it says, stressing this offers big lessons for Bangladesh.

- IANS