Low investment in education impediment to poverty cut
Speakers tell international symposium
Lack of investment in education and skill development is an impediment to poverty alleviation and development of a knowledge-based society, said speakers at a two-day international symposium yesterday.
“If we can develop education and skilled human resources, we will be a rich country,” said Prof M Kaykobad of Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (Buet).
The symposium was organised by Bangladesh Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Alumni Association at Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council in the city.
Kaykobad said although the government aims at turning Bangladesh into a “digital country” by 2021, less priority has been given in education, which creates skilled human resources and would have helped attain the goal.
“Not prioritising education is really shocking,” he said, citing that the US spends a considerable amount of money behind each of its students.
The education sector currently gets 14 percent of the total government expenditure and 2.3 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to the Sixth Five Year Plan (SFYP) for 2011-2015.
Investment in education should increase for faster alleviation of poverty and development of human resource, said Planning Commission Member Shamsul Alam.
Contribution of education in poverty reduction is much higher than micro credit and remittance earnings. Increased coverage of primary and secondary education facilitates a faster decline in poverty, he said.
Referring to SFYP, Shamsul said they are planning to raise allocation in education to 18 percent of the budgetary expenditure and four percent of the GDP by the fiscal year 2015.
Lack of infrastructure for educational institutions is another bottleneck in expanding information and communication technology (ICT) education for the development of an e-society, said Kaykobad.
The slogan “Digital Bangladesh” is very encouraging, he said, suggesting on taking real steps that facilitates attainment of the goal.
“India and some other countries are ahead of us (in ICT) and they did not utter words like digital India,” he said.
India earns US $ 60 billion a year by selling IT services compared to Bangladesh's US $27 million, he added.
Individual institutions like universities should convert to the digital format first to encourage other organisations. ICT can be a good tool to improve the quality of education, he said, suggesting for the introduction of more mobile applications.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments