Japanese jobs calling

The scope for skilled Bangladeshi IT graduates to work in famous Japanese companies are widening as the technologically developed country needs a huge number of young engineers to run the companies, said Zunaid Ahmed Palak, state minister for ICT, yesterday.

The hiring process has already started as 13 well-trained engineers recently joined different Japanese companies and some more will do so within a short time, he said.

“Japan needs hundreds of IT engineers and we can manage jobs for our skilled manpower over there from next year,” said Palak in a certificate presentation ceremony of a training session at the ICT division.

Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC) in association with JICA Bangladesh Office organised the training for Bangladeshi youths under a “Bangladesh-Japan ICT Engineers' Training Program (B-JET)”.

Palak urged engineers and companies specialising in information technology and information technology enabled services (ITES) to take this up as a great opportunity to increase the export market of Bangladesh.

“Bangladesh has a huge demographic dividend where more than 65 percent of the population is of working age and on the other hand, Japan, the third largest economy of the world, is experiencing a shrink in manpower,” said Palak.

Interestingly Japan is the third most attractive IT market in the world, next to America and Europe, he added.

The government has targeted to digitalise Bangladesh by 2021 and set a target for employing 20 lakh people in the IT/ITES sector and get $5 billion through exports from this sector, he said.

“We are eager to take advantage by providing trained IT engineers to the Japanese market in an appropriate manner. Bangladesh will take the opportunity to fill this gap with skilled IT engineers for building Digital Bangladesh,” Palak added.

Japanese Ambassador to Bangladesh Hiroyasu Izumi, Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica) Chief Representative Takatoshi Nishikata and senior officials of the ICT division were present.