7 ANALYSIS OF FISHERIES MANPOWER IN BANGLADESH

(107) To produce a recent picture of the available fisheries educated manpower, an enquiry was sent to all institutions in the country where fisheries personnel is employed. Most of the enquiry forms were received back, and the data provided are summarized below.

(108) Fisheries manpower in Bangladesh is produced by:

• the Faculty of Fisheries (an average of 60 graduates yearly), BAU;
• the Department of Zoology (45 graduates), DU;
• the Institute of Marine Sciences (12 graduates), CU;
• the Department of Zoology (10 graduates), CU;
• the Department of Zoology (10 graduates), RU.

Graduates of all those institutions are now working in the fisheries sector of the country. A list of fisheries educated manpower, their institution-wise distribution, their qualifications, and their fields of specialization is presented in Annex A. This list is further analyzed hereunder.

(109) Table 9 represents the organization-wise distribution of fisheries specialists (from the level of Scientific Officer (SO) and above), engaged in fisheries research, teaching, planning, and training activities. The figures in Table 9 should not be considered as absolute figures, but enough persons/institutes have been contacted to ascertain that the figures reflect the overall situation. Most of the specialists at junior- and mid-level have a masters degree (59 %), while the seniors have Ph D (16 %) or M S (8 %). One third (33 %) of the Ph D's received foreign training and/or foreign post-doctoral research experience. Most of them are employed in universiteis and research institutes.

Table 9 - Organizational distribution of various education levels of fisheries specialists (SO-level and above)

(110) Table 10 shows how the qualified non-FRI officers are distributed over the different areas of fisheries. They cover all the important sectors of fisheries, except socio-economics. The majority (53 %) is active in aquaculture and fish biology, representing major fields of interest of FRI, both for research and for training. Their service and experience, therefore, may be utilized in training programmes as well as in collaborative research work. The specialists concerned produced a large number of research papers, but the majority of them mentioned inadequate research facilities as the main bottleneck for still more or better scientific work.

Table 10 - Distribution of fisheries manpower *) by areas of specialization and education levels

*) FRI officers not included

(111) In Table 11 the area distribution of FRI officers is presented. The majority (75 %) of the officers are M Sc degree holders and are junior (63 %) and mid-level (30 %) employees. Only 7 % received Ph D; they represent only three areas of specialization. Compared with other organizations in the country the situation is just reverse (see Table 12), and there is acute shortage of trained manpower to conduct all planned training courses and to guide the research programmes. It is suggested that efforts should be made for co-ordinated research programmes of FRI and other institutions, particularly from the universities. The combination of (extra) experienced personnel from the universities with (extra) facilities at FRI should be used for the training and research programmes, at least during the initial stages of development of FRI.

Table 11 - Distribution of FRI officers over areas of specialization

Table 12 - Position-wise distribution of fisheries manpower

(112) Although many (50%) of the FRI researchers received short in-service training in the country, further exposure to international research and advanced training abroad in their respective fields of research is strongly needed. Especially in the areas of non-parasitological pathology, socio-economics, and ecology and pollution acute shortage of experienced manpower is felt.