Matching education to national needs

SOME 50,000 jobs are there, all for the asking in the BOI-approved foreign investment sector. What seems to be lacking is the skilled and qualified labour which could put these job opportunities to good use.

These facts are eye-openers for those charged with framing our public policy and we hope they would have paid close attention to the contents of our front page lead story yesterday which was sourced to Enterprise Development and Investment Promotion Minister Rohitha Bogollagama.

Considering the enormity of our unemployment problem, 50,000 jobs is no trifling amount and we hope measures would soon be launched by the relevant State authorities to ensure that these job opportunities are fully and effectively utilized.

As disclosed by Minister Bogollagama, most of these job vacancies are in the apparel, health, construction, Business Processing Outsourcing (BPO) and the IT sectors. It is clear that these sectors have a huge bearing on the development thrust of the country and immense priority needs to be attached to the task of finding the skilled manpower to fill these job vacancies.

Given this context, it would not be in the country's interest to fill such vacancies with foreign labour. Apparently some companies in the construction sector have already sounded out the BOI on the advisability of getting down foreign workers to fill vacancies in the construction field and the authorities could be accused of having a wrong sense of priorities if such a measure was sanctioned by them. Ideally, local expertise should fill these vacancies and we hope every effort would be made to ensure that this condition is fulfilled.

However, the companies' query on the foreign construction, workers adequately establishes that Sri Lanka is ill-prepared to make good use of these job opportunities. In other words, we do not possess trained and qualified manpower in adequate numbers to fill these vacancies.

These questions, of course, have wider ramifications and go to the very heart of the issue of how relevant our system of education is to our national needs. This is a much debated issue, but if the number of unfilled vacancies is anything to go by, we are yet to make any progress towards resolving it satisfactorily.

It is plain to see that public policy planning needs to be far-sighted and fully cognizant of our national needs. Without much ado, our educational curricular must be adapted to match our most urgent requirements.

Tens of thousands of secondary school leavers and graduates with only book learning and qualifications which do not match national needs should be made a thing of the past.

All secondary school students and undergraduates must be imparted IT, technological skills and a sufficient knowledge of English, to enable them to fill the job vacancies on offer. In other words, our educational system should be attuned to national development.

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