Shortage seen of IT professionals from 2011

Sri Lanka needs to produce 5000 IT professionals annually from 2011 to cater to the IT industry and to retain the current IT industry growth rate of 20%.

Picture shows Madu Ratnayake (left) with British High Commissioner Dominick Chilcott and an unidentified official.

At present the country produces only 1500 IT professionals a year and according to a survey done by Sri Lanka’s ICTA (Information Communication Technology Agency) the entire industry has only 31,000 professionals at present inclusive of the IT graduates who are in non-IT jobs such as banks.

“The IT industry world wide grows at a rate of over 35%. Sri Lanka had grown it’s workforce at a rate of 20% over the last three years. We urgently need to produce more IT professionals and graduates if we are to take advantage out of this opportunity.” said Madu Ratnayake General Manager of Virtusa Sri Lanka speaking at the recent ceremonial opening of the UK operations centre in Colombo.

Ratnayake emphasised on the need to improve the infrastructure of the local universities to enable them to teach larger number of students. He further stressed on the importance of the availability of alternative options such as SLIIT and BIT, courses which offer IT related degrees to students who do not get the opportunity to enter the universities.

“IT is important that we take steps to popularise this field among the youth who will enter the job market,” Ratnayake told The Sunday Times FT adding that the common notion favouring the traditionally popular professions such as civil engineering and medicine has to change for the better. “In India this mindset change has already taken place. IT is a profession which is popular and sought after. We need to ensure that we get to this stage fast,” he said.

However, according to him this alone will not solve the issue of lack of lecturers in the field. “A lecturer in IT gets paid significantly less than an IT graduate, thus many professionals do not opt for lecturing once they qualify. To sustain the growth we need to bring the salaries of the IT lecturers in par with the industry,” he said. (CD)