Bengal faces dearth of skilled manpower in IT sector: IT Minister

Barrackpore, Nov 26 (UNI) West Bengal IT Minister Prof Debesh Das today expressed concern over the dearth of experts in various fields, including the IT sector, despite considerable industrial development in the state in recent years.

Inaugurating a week-long Career Fair for Education and Counselling, organised by the Rashtraguru Surendranath College here, Prof Das observed that despite tremendous employment opportunities being created in the IT sector, the state lacked skilled manpower.

''Such constraints can only be removed if the students of any discipline learn their subject thoroughly and with dedication,'' he said.

He asserted that the IT sector also needed a good number of civil and mechanical engineers as well as financial and legal experts, having good computer knowledge, so that they could make optimum use of their abilities as all the major work in different sectors was being computerised.

''We are also facing a shortage of financial experts, as many companies in the IT sector are looking for such candidates with multiple skills,'' he added.

''The communication gap is also proving to be a major bottleneck when outsourcing jobs in the IT sector,'' he informed.

Prof Das, being a computer scientist, felt that if the youth were able to take a proper decision on how and what type of career building process they should follow, enormous employment opportunties would open up for them with the rapid development of industries in the country.

Prof Asish Dasgupta, Director of the School of Ionsphere, Radio Physics Department of Calcutta University, who presided over the inaugural session, maintained that the state was yet to have proper faculty in the educational sector.

He pointed out that fort the first time in the state, a career fair was being organised by a government-aided college to provide effective guidance to the students with the active participation of as many as 14 private and public sector organisations.

UNI