Bangladesh-China friendship will remain unbroken through education and technology exchange: Education minister
Photo: Collected
The friendship between Bangladesh and China will remain unbroken forever, Education and Primary and Mass Education Minister Dr ANM Ehsanul Hoque Milon has said.
He said, ‘It is through educational and technological exchange that this historic bond between the two countries can be made more lasting.’
He said this in his speech as chief guest at the inaugural session of an event titled ‘Second China-Bangladesh Roundtable on Governance Experience Exchange’ at a hotel in the capital today.
The event was organised with the aim of strengthening mutual cooperation between the two countries in education, human resource development, the blue economy and disaster management.
Referring to the demographic dividend, the education minister said about 65 percent of the country’s total population are working-age youths. The government’s main priority is to make this huge population skilled in technical education (TVET) and turn them into human resources of international standard.
Having seen the close relationship between industry and educational institutions during a recent visit to China, and taking lessons from there, the government has taken an initiative to make the country’s technical institutions world-class.
Alongside this, memorandums of understanding (MoUs) have also been signed with several Chinese institutions.
ANM Ehsanul Hoque Milon further said there is a plan to raise the budget for the education sector from 2 percent of GDP to 5 percent in phases, a large part of which will be spent on improving the quality of technical education. In addition, a plan is being taken to establish a specialised ‘circular economy’ or blue economy-based university to utilise the resources of the economic zone of the Bay of Bengal.
Former home minister and Patuakhali-1 lawmaker Air Vice Marshal (retd) Altaf Hossain Chowdhury, Dhaka University Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr ABM Obaidul Islam, Cultural Counsellor of the Chinese Embassy Li Shaopeng and Vice President of the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies Dr Li Kaisheng also spoke at the event.
