By Garvin Karunaratne, Ph.D.
In view of the fact that over twenty percent of young people in
the World, have failed to find a due place in the economic ladder and have
become drop offs of the education and development system, definite action to
equip them to become contributors to society has to get priority. .
Every country has a plethora of job skills training programmes,
but the countries provide only skills
training and expect the trained youth to either find suitable employment or to become entrepreneurs. Finding suitable
employment to utilize their skills is a difficult task because the
International Monetary Fund has already imposed its Structural Adjustment
Programme on almost all Third World countries with the result that these
countries have been directed to follow a
set of policies – to allow unrestricted imports and are banned from
implementing any government programmes that attend to create commercial
undertakings. This means that though skills training can be provided the
Governments cannot either restrict imports of items that can be made locally or
set up programmes where the skills trained youth will be helped to establish
manufacturing units that make items for local consumption or export. The IMF’s
Structural Adjustment Programme also imposes a high interest rate policy which
means that any entrepreneur has to obtain funds at a vfor bidding high interest
at over twenty percent to establish any industry.
The result is that the vast majority of the skills trained youth
continue to be unemployed and become consumers, receivers of welfare grants rather
than become contributors.
In this context, the achievement of the Youth Self Employment
Programme of Bangladesh comes of great importance in that it is the only development programme that can claim success
in guiding millions of youths to become self employed on a commercially viable
basis. It is easily the only youth employment programme that has achieved world
status within the short space of three decades. It is a programme that has left
its imprint on the sands of time.
No feasibility reports were written to get this programme
approved. The approval came in a flash.
In Bangladesh when the new
Military Government of General Ershard took over the country in 1982, the
Ministry of Youth Development was providing skills training to 40,000 youths
annually but the vast majority of them failed to find employment and continued
to be unemployed for life. I happened to be the Commonwealth Fund Advisor to
the Ministry on Youth Development and the new Hon. Minister for Labour and
Manpower, Air Vice Marshall Aminul Islam at a Conference held to evaluate youth
development programmes, ordered me,:
What can you contribute
for Bangladesh”?
I would suggest that you approve a self employment programme to supplement the
skills training programmes that are
being implemented by the Ministry of Youth Development, where the lecturers who
train the youths in skills will in addition, also guide the youths to establish
enterprises to manufacture items for sale and become self employed
entrepreneurs.”
The Secretary to the Treasury, the highest official in the country
who was present replied:
Self Employment is not a task that can be done. The International
Labor Organization (ILO) with all their unlimited resources have just miserably
failed to establish a self employment programme at Tangail in Bangladesh. They
laboured for three years and brought experts from all over and failed. It was a
great loss – a massive expenditure and this Government is not going to waste
any more funds again. Self Employment is not a task that can be done. That was
the conclusion of the ILO and they are the experts of international standing”
I replied:
Though the ILO failed, I
can establish a Self Employment Programme. I hold the experience of
establishing self employment units in Sri Lanka for eighteen years and also
hold the Ph.D in Agricultural Economics and Non Formal Education from Michigan
State University. I am confident of success.”
. The Secretary to the Treasury the highest official in Bangladesh
laughed loud at my attempt to make entrepreneurs out of school drop outs- the
category from which the Department of Youth Development found youths for skills
training. He was joined by Secretaries of a few other Ministries.
.. I argued that though the ILO failed I would succeed. The
Secretary to the Treasury were adamant
that such a programme would never succeed, but I quoted instances where I had
established successful employment projects providing incomes to youths
while simultaneously producing what the country imported. The battle went on
for an easy two full hours The Hon.Minister was listening in silence till his
patience was exhausted. The Minister
finally ordered us to shut up. He asked for any
Government training programmes that guided youths to become
entrepreneurs. The Secretary to the Treasurty replied None”. Then the Minister
asked for the number of youths that failed to get into higher education as well
as finding a suitable job- the youths that will be scraping the barrel for
life, unemployed. The Secretary answered
that it was in the millions, every year The Hon Minister without any hesitation
ordered that I should establish a self employment programme to create entrepreneurs.
The Secretary to the Treasury stumped, stating‚ that there will be no
funds to establish a self employment programme, to which I replied that we will
find savings within the approved budgets for the skills training of
the youths and re deploy staff as necessary. The Hon Minister
approved my suggestion.. .
We started planning work that night itself. The next morning I was
addressing trainees at the training centers and also training our Lecturers and
Youth Officers on how the programme should be done. The officers who had till
then done traditional youth development work were trained in concepts of
economics. All Training Institutes were immediately altered to Training Cum
Extension Institutes where the youths in training were to be guided to become
self employed. Overnight we established a countrywide special extension service
for the lecturers to go out on inspections and help the youths who faced
problems. The youths were guided to draft their own projects to become
self employed, starting small farms even with a few cows or chicks. Dresses
were sewn using the machines at the training centers that were kept open after
work till ten at night. The method was to intensively guide the trainees
in the management of their enterprises. Every action from the planning of their
projects, to the purchase of raw materials, the chicks, the feed, the process
of manufacture, the process of the growth and sale of cattle, the making of
garments and their sale was all monitored on a non formal education basis
where the youths were trained to look at the advantages and disadvantages of
each course of action and act on their own. They were monitored closely and
helped when they failed. . The trainees were taught basic economics related to
their ventures‚ The training included understanding the free market
economy and the youths were guided to think, understand and increase their
ability and capacity in the process. This was non formal education in action.
The achievement was within the village setting where the projects became family
concerns with brothers and sisters becoming involved. On our Visits, Training
sessions were provided impromptu where everyone could participate.
The effort was to make a youth movement to make youths establish
ventures and guide them till they are income bearing equal to the earnings of a
clerical officer in the Public Service.
This Programme began at the end of March 1982 with a few trainees
and was expanded to 2000 by October 1983. By the time I left Bangladesh at the
end of October 1983- in sixteen months my team was guiding 2000
youths. The team comprised the
Secretary, the Joint Secretary of the Ministry with a few hundred staff of
Directors, Deputy Directors of Youth, Director for Livestock and Poultry ,
Directors of the 3 Residential Training Centers in Livestock & Poultry,
Lecturers in Training Institutes- all of whom were taught the essentials of
economics firstly to be able to analyse the economy of Bangladesh and to arrive
at areas of economic activity where self employment production would be an
asset.to the country. They were also taught methods of imparting instructions
in a manner that would evoke the active participation of the trainees and
enable them to think and make their own decisions. This included national and
regional planning culled down to the village level., where the self employment
units were established.
We got down to work in earnest.. The officers were patriotic to
the extreme. It was long hours every day for months Daily circuits in Toyota
Hiace bone shakers- leaving early morning to return whenever. The officials
responded ably.
In an evaluation conducted
in March 1983, eleven months from the commencement it was found that of the
youths that commenced by May 1982, 283
youths had established their own
commercial ventures, with stocks of flocks and head of cattle valued at Tk.911,630.00. It was building up stocks, buying chicks and
ducklings and seeing them grow. As much as 223 of them had reached a net income
of TK 369.00 a month. Of them 83 earned over Tk. 500.00 a month. In the Jamalpur District, in disciplines like dress
making, fisheries, retail sales, electrical goods repairing workshops, welding,
etc. 73 youths were involved, earning an average net income of Tk 445.00 a
month with 20 of them earning net incomes of Tk. 500.00 or over:”
At that time Tk. 500.00 a month was the salary drawn by a Clerical
Officer in the Government Service. Getting the youths to reach a net income of
Tk. 500.00 was our aim.
In an Evaluation done in August 1983, 16 months since
commencement the Evaluation Report
states:
A Programme of Excellence in every respect unfolds in the results documented. .Of 500 unemployed youths who joined the
programme in the early months, 479 are
earning an average net income of Tk 596.00 in August 1983, 8 to 12 months
after they commenced their commercial ventures, 55 of them earn over Tk.
1000.00 a month and 253 earn over Tk
500.00.”
In August 1983, barely 16 months since the commencent, the
achievement was hailed by the two Secretaries of the Ministry of Labour and
Manpower; In their words:
Dr.Karunaratne’s
significant contribution has been in the field of self employment to the
drop-out youths. This programme was not only designed but also guided by him.
This activity which was initially launched as a pilot experimental project has
been a great success and has now being adopted as a fill-fledged Programme. The
Government of Bamgladesh..has been successful in providing meaningful
employment to a large number of youths on this Programme” .(Asafuddowlah)
Dr. Karunaratne’s role as
the formulator of the program has been particularly commendable. It was mainly
through his dedication and hard work that the pilot project has now been
formally accepted as one of the most important development projects. (Ayubur Rahaman)
The YSEP has stood the test
of time for over three decades (1982-2019) The Five Year Plan of 1997-2002
devotes 8 pages to this program. This is easily the premier employment creation
program that one can find in the world today. All other programs involve
training and apprenticeship only and never include the tasks of motivating
youths, involving them in non-formal education endeavor to develop their
abilities and capacities, through technical guidance and management advice
provided as they work on their projects aimed at their becoming commercially viable, which are the
cornerstones on which this programme has
been based.
Instead of traditional
youth work, the aims of the Ministry of Youth had been altered To facilitate the unemployed youth for
gainful employment/self employment, providing vocational/skills development
training and micro credit support.
To involve the youth in the
mainstream of national development processes” (www.dyd.gov.bd/nyp_activities.php)
The above achievement of the Youth Self Employment Programme
stands great in comparison to what was achieved by the ILO Project in Tangail
in the earlier three years, where the number of entrepreneurs was only 626,
where Tk. 1.38 million was disbursed of which only Tk. .61 million was recovered.
The best cases document people owning one milk cow or fattening one head of
cattle for sale. Many of the 626 people have dropped off.
By August 1983, 16 months after
commencement The Department of Youth
Development were training 2000 youths. The Programme was expanded apace
to involve 7000 youths by 1987, to 16,000 by 1992 and to 160,000 a year from 1997. In 1982 we had only 3 Residential
Training Centers. This was increased to 64 by 1997. In
2011 February The Government of
Bangladesh reported to the 34 th Session of the Governing Council of
IFAD(FAO) that this programme had guided
as much as two million youths to be self employed‚ on a
commercially viable basis.(Statement by Bangladesh to the 34 th Session of the
Governing Council of IFAD(FAO), dated19/02/2011)
My task was also to train the officers to carry on the programme
after my‚ two year period of service ended.‚ True to a man
Bangladeshi officers carried on the ardous task and‚ today 160,000
youths are being guided annually.. A full Department of Youth Development now
devotes 95% of their time to training and guiding youths to become self
employed..
Every country boasts of skills training programmes where youths
are trained in the thousands but none provide training to guide the trained to
become entrepreneurs- the task that was successfully done in this Youth Seldf
Employment Programme.
It would behove every
Government to decide that all skills
training programmes should include guidance to enable the youths in training to
establish enterprises of their own and become entrepreneurs. This can be
achieved with little extra cost as the staff that train youths in skills will
also be guiding them to become self employed.
Another important fact is that for the first few years, no new
funds were provided. Savings were found within the skills training programme
budgets for holding training workshops to create self employment..
Having a live successful employment creation programme to follow
and guide is a great asset to any country that wishes to commence activity. The
may be available for any country that
hopes to convert their unemployed youth to become entrepreneurs.
. The entire world yearns for that development today.
Garvin Karunaratne, Ph.D. Michigan State University‚
Commonwealth Fund Advisor of Youth Development to the Government
of Bangladesh(1981-1983)
Author of;
–How the IMF Ruined Sri Lanka and Alternative Programs of
Success (Godages)2006
–Success in Development-(Godages)2010
Papers on the Economic Development of Sri Lanka-, Godages 2012
How the IMF Sabotaged Third World Development, Kindle/Godages,
2017
October 11, 2019
