Tech giants helping to train Thai digital workforce

Google, Microsoft, Cisco, and Huwaei are helping Thailand create a learning curriculum that will produce 40,000 digital and high-tech workers by 2022, contributing to closing the human resource gap for the Kingdom’s advanced development, the Digital Economy Promotion Agency said last week.

Nuttapon Nimmanphatcharin, head of the Digital Economy Promotion Agency (DEPA), is collaborating with the global tech companies to design 84 courses that will cover up-skilling, re-skilling, and new skills for workers in tech-related industries.

The courses will be taught at major universities around the country, and the first instruction will begin in the fourth quarter of this year, he said.

Thailand is in the early stages of its 20-year advanced development strategy named Thailand 4.0, and local and international businesses are investing heavily in the Eastern Economic Corridor, a showcase zone for higher-technology and green industries just east of Bangkok.

Analysts have said, however, that for Thailand to achieve its development objectives it will have to address its human resources: there is a shortfall in the numbers of workers with the skills needed for the industries that will power the new economy.

To mitigate the shortfall in the short term, Frost & Sullivan, a United States-based consultancy, released a study last week in collaboration with DEPA that proposed the government recruit and leverage international talent to meet the needs of industry.

The study recommended that Thailand focus on the Internet of Things in transport, telecoms, agriculture, and manufacturing; automation; data analytics in banking and financial services, telecoms, retail, tourism and healthcare; AI for vertical industries; 5G, and blockchain.