Government skills certificates fail to gain expected recognition

Bangladesh is producing hundreds of thousands of vocationally trained and certified workers, but weak recognition of their qualifications and a persistent mismatch between training and labour-market demand are limiting their employment prospects, experts and officials said at a national consultation in Dhaka.

Nearly seven lakh trainees have received certificates from the National Skills Development Authority (NSDA), but the qualifications still lack satisfactory recognition even within Bangladesh, said Md Rabiul Islam, member (Registration and Certification) and additional secretary at the NSDA.

“If it is not satisfactory domestically, then why will it be satisfactory abroad?” he said.

Poor coordination is compounding the problem. The NSDA has around 2,300 registered skills training providers covering 369 occupations, but only 18 officers coordinate with 22 ministries and 36 agencies, Rabiul said.

He was speaking at the “National Consultation on Skills, Migration and Mobility: The Way Forward for Bangladesh”, organised by the Ovibashi Karmi Unnayan Program (OKUP) under the EU-funded Global Strategy for Skills Migration and Development project, led by Radboud University in the Netherlands.

Research presented by Urmi Jahan, research manager at OKUP, showed a persistent gap between skills training and employment.

In 2023, around 6,89,745 vocational graduates entered the workforce, while about 18 lakh young people received skills training. But, 45-47% of technical and vocational training graduates struggled to find suitable employment, she said.

“The issue is not only how many people we train, but also what skills we provide, who needs those skills, and where the jobs are,” she said.

The research identified weak links between training institutes and industries, limited practical training, outdated curricula and equipment, inadequate graduate tracking, and insufficient integration of digital and green technologies as key challenges.

Md Sakawat Ali, principal of the Dhaka Technical Teachers Training Institute, called for better labour-market information, stronger language training and agreements with destination countries to ensure recognition of Bangladeshi qualifications abroad.

“If a market needs an automobile technician, we are delivering skills in construction or tiles… there is a mismatch,” he said.

Ministry of Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment Additional Secretary Md Saiful Haque Chowdhury said the government aims to send one crore workers abroad over five years. But under the current approach, Bangladesh has only 55-60% of the capacity required to meet the target.

Rahnuma Salam Khan, national programme manager at the ILO, said the skills mismatch is part of a broader labour migration governance problem, noting that more than 70% of Bangladesh’s overseas employment has historically been in low-skilled jobs.