Dhaka: Describing the shortage of skilled manpower as the ‘biggest challenge’ for Bangladesh’s further development in the IT sector, Prime Minister’s Information and Communication Technology Advisor Sajeeb Wazed Joy has said the government targeted to train up 75,000 professionals in the sector in the next three years to solve the problem.

‘The biggest challenge that Bangladesh is facing in the IT sector development is shortage of skilled manpower as the country could not develop enough IT labour force that it needs...the number is limited,’ BSS quoted him as saying in an interview with CeBIT Podcast in Germany on Thursday.

‘Keeping this in mind our government has set a target to train up 75,000 IT professionals within next three years but that is a fraction in comparison to the garment sector where millions of manpower are employed...you know that students studying in the relevant subject needs three or four years to complete the course. We are trying to catch up them,’ he added.

Joy is now in Hanover, Germany for attending the Centre for Office Automation, Information Technology and Telecommunication (CeBIT) Expo.

While commenting on the much-talked-about ‘hacking issue’, Joy said the exact number of hacking that took place in Bangladesh is very hard to determine, but the Kaspersky Group, the leading security solution provider in the world, ranked Bangladesh as the No. 1 country in terms of the target of the hackers.

‘I think the probable reason behind this is we have been digitized at the fastest rate. We are digitizing government services...our focus is on digitizing fast,’ he said.

The PM’s ICT adviser further said his policy is clear as let’s get it digitized...let’s get it done efficiently and quickly possible.

‘To thwart the hackers, we are looking at upgrading our system to version 2 (two), because many of our system is still version 1 (one) and they are the much more target of the hackers,’ he said.

Joy said the country has in the common line and the more and more companies as well as the government services have been digitized. ‘The growth (of the country) is bigger, unfortunately the target (of the hackers) is also bigger,’ he said.

He said sufficient experts did not exist in the country when it developed (IT) system in the country. ‘So we had to hire foreign experts that cost 10 times,’ he said.

Joy said 80 percent of digitization in Bangladesh was undertaken by local companies. But it was exception in the national ID cards and bank digitization that were done by the foreign firms, he said.

He said the digitization of Bangladesh Bank where the country’s first major hacking took place was a project undertaken by the World Bank and implemented by a foreign firm. ‘But other government services did not face such a major hacking,’ he said.