On 12 January 2020, the World Health Organization confirmed that a novel coronavirus was the cause of a respiratory illness in a cluster of people in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China. The COVID-19 pandemic was confirmed to have spread to Bangladesh in 8th March 2020. The world is now stopped their harsh activities like stopped the Mills, Offices, flights and many more and the whole world under lockdown. In the meantime, most of the job holder lost their job and increasing the unemployment rate very fast. Let’s see a horrible statistic about current unemployment- two million Bangladesh jobs 'at risk' as clothes orders dry up, since March 16th, roughly 26.4 million Americans have filed for unemployment, 100 Million and more Indian jobs are at risk after COVID-19 lockdown.
According to the study conducted by the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), the unemployment rate among university graduates in Bangladesh is 38.6 per cent, besides 34 percent of the graduates get jobs within two to three years after completing their graduation, about 70 percent of the graduates think that proper training is needed for improving their skills to hit the job market.
The garments industry has already faced cancellation and holding off orders worth nearly $3 billion due to the impact of the global pandemic due to the COVID-19 pandemic and most of the employees were sacked or didn’t received their salary. Garments worked and unemployed persons are passing very crucial moments as they have food and financial crisis. Hotels, restaurants and pubs were some of the first businesses to be closed on government advice many parts of this sector will remain effectively non-functional over the course of the pandemic and it’s likely that many employees have been lost their jobs. The travel industry is potentially one of the worst hit. At the centre of this is the severely affected commercial airline industry, which has had knock-on effects on tourism and travel. Newspapers and print media have reduced print similarly, advertising has often been ‘pulled’ or postponed, resulting in a loss of revenue.
So what can we do after pandemic? I belied if our youth plays a significant role after post-pandemic and obviously with the help of the Bangladesh Government. E-commerce, informational technology, finance and banking, telecommunication, public health and government, food processing, retail, etc. are some sector which has remarkable contribution during the pandemic. We need to focus on the following sector and prepare ourselves, the government needs to funding research and the health sector is more important.
IT & technology
When lockdown started in Bangladesh several offices starting work from home and According to Bangladeshi Google Principle Engineer Zaheed Sabur shared that he doing his regular job from his own house in Switzerland. So in that cased most of the employees attended meetings or conferences using Zoom, Google meets, Tencent meeting, Microsoft Teams or Slack, etc. Even recruitment ongoing via skype interviews and everything is depending on Information technology. So we need to develop our skills in IT and it must be benefited in the near future. Many technology job roles can operate during the pandemic with relatively little disruption, in large part due to being able to be carried out online or remotely. Examples of these roles include software developers, QA testers and data scientists.
Retail
The fates of retailers and their supporting industries have been mixed. Supermarkets and food retailers are considered essential businesses and have had to adapt very quickly to increased demand and health advice. Most supermarkets have hired thousands of temporary staff and have implemented new social distancing measures and protection for their staff (such as screens to protect cashiers).
Banking and finance
If authority stopped banking activity, then general people’s faces trouble because remittances are coming from abroad in the bank. Some donation comes from different places for helping poor peoples. In that case most of the person using Internet Banking which is good but needs to continue banking service.
Telecommunications
Many services businesses have switched to a remote work model and requested that their employees work from home. People who may have been fine with a mobile data plan prior to COVID-19 are setting up home internet to work more effectively. Instead of serving concentrated business networks, service providers must adapt to providing fast, stable and secure internet service to millions of workers spread out over smaller home networks. Networks are also under strain because of social distancing. When everyone is confined to their home, more internet bandwidth is consumed watching videos, engaging on social media and keeping in touch with friends and family.
Public health
The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown the world into a sudden economic depression. Public service workers are needed in areas such as benefits administration, social services, public health, education, and IT development, to ensure that Bangladeshi are able to access critical services and connect with the support they need during this difficult time. Bangladesh's government recently recruited 7000 Health workers which are really good. Nurses, who are responsible for the day-to-day care of patients, are particularly in demand during this time. Respiratory specialists, physicians, and paramedics are also in demand. Outside of direct patient care, healthcare administrators are also in demand. The huge influx of patients means the volume of administrative tasks such as enrolling patients, updating records, and coordinating with insurance companies has surged as well. So Bangladesh Government needs to focus on Health Sector and research for the upcoming future as demand.
Bangladesh is a fast-growing economic country in the world. We have lots of natural resources and young talent. Recently Anik Sarkar got an appointment from Google as a Software engineer which is the example of talent and Zaheed Sabur currently works as a Principe Engineer at Google as a first Bangladeshi. So this is very few examples and I believe Bangladesh waiting for some positive news in the upcoming future.
Writer: Finance Officer, Food for the Hungry(USA)
Email: [email protected]
BDST: 1408 HRS, JUN 27, 2020
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