Skills and Employment Programme in Bangladesh (Sudokkho)

Over the last six years, training delivered by the private sector in partnership with Sudokkho has helped over 71,000 young people into work at the cost of GBP 216.00 per head in the Ready Made Garment (RMG) and Construction Sectors. Sudokkho training model has been particularly successful at reaching the extreme poor, who represented 63 per cent of Sudokkho trainees. Sudokkho tested two models of training delivered by the private sector. The first was delivered by commercial training institutions, known as Private Training Providers (PTPs), and the second was delivered directly by employers in the workplace, known as Industry Based Training (IBT).  

PTPs envisaged business case for offering commercially viable training in a context of Bangladesh where there is availability of fully subsidized training from different donor projects in skills training market. Sudokkho implemented technical assistance package for strengthening institutional capacity of PTPs which led to improve quality and relevance of the training; operations and profitability of the PTPs, trust among PTPs (supply side), industries and potential trainees (demand side) and sustainability of the PTPs.  

Industry Based Training with the RMG sector proved to be particularly successful and has been implemented in 194 factories across Bangladesh, which have invested a total of GBP 6.9 million in training. Rather than directly subsidising in-house training, Sudokkho offered Technical Assistance to support RMG industries for establishing training model with the potential to expand without direct project support. Industry partners covered all direct costs of training. The IBT model was effective and efficient in-factory training system with better and faster training for skilling of unskilled SMOs, up-skilling of low performers and development of multi-skilled operators.  

According to Sakhawat Hossain Khan, Deputy General Manager at Far East Knitting and Dyeing Industries, employees trained by Sudokkho added productivity to their operations. “The biggest development we observed after we started working with Sudokkho workers was that we could quickly deliver trained workers within 15 days according to the demands of the production floor,” he notes. “It brought a drastic change to our way of working.”  

The programme was funded by the UK and Swiss governments, was managed by Palladium in consortium with the British Council and Swisscontact.