Dhaka: Cuisine training institutes could open up a new avenue for Bangladesh to create huge overseas jobs with handsome salaries for its youngsters as the Britain curry industry has now a demand for around 50,000 skilled chefs and managers.

"The UK curry industry is facing a shortage of 40,000 to 50,000 skilled workforce in Britain's thousands of Bangladeshi-owned restaurants. Bangladesh can easily take the opportunity by setting up of cuisine training institutes," Pasha Khondokar, president of Bangladesh Caterers Association (BCA), told BSS by phone from London, capital of the United Kingdom.

In an exclusive interview, Khandokar said the government may take necessary steps to set up training institute in partnership with BCA to serve its purpose, which represents 12,000 Bangladeshi restaurants employing over 100,000 people directly in Britain.

There can be a state-level bilateral agreement between the UK and Bangladesh to create skilled chefs for the UK's curry industry, he said, adding the BCA is ready to cooperate if Bangladesh government takes initiative to do so.

The BCA president said, "We are discussing the matter with the government high ups for the last few years to make them understand about the untapped potential of employment opportunities in Britain but it is unfortunate that no step has so far been taken."

Bajloor Rashid, a former BCA president, said India has over 200 training institutes that are producing skilled manpower as per the British requirements and the BCA sometimes hire skilled workforce from India paying high salaries.

Some restaurants have already been sold and some others were closed, he said apprehending that Bangladeshis may lose the control over the gigantic curry industry if it failed to create skilled manpower fulfilling the UK requirements.

Citing a survey conducted by the BCA, Rashid said each restaurant sees minimum 30 per cent less business every year as the restaurants are being run with shortage of quality chefs and managers.

Asked about reasons behind the shortage of staffs, he said post of cooks and kitchen staff have remained vacant as a good number of kitchen staff went on retirement and some others on the way to retire in the UK curry industry.

"We have changed the food habit as 'curry' has become the national dish of the UK from fish and chips and this has been possible for the long-term campaign of BCA, said Bajloor, who got prestigious BCA Award-2012 on lifetime service to the Curry Industry and British Bangladeshi Community.

He said the BCA has already taken a three-year project to set up a cuisine training institute dubbed 'London School of Curry' with funding from Britain but it will meet hardly few hundreds of skilled staffs.

"The BCA plans to establish training institute in a bigger scale to meet the demand for jobs in the UK curry industry," said the BCA leader.

The curry industry is one of the biggest industries in the UK with annual turnover of around 4.1 billion pounds.

Ends/AMA/18/01/13