The government hoped that graduates would take IT jobs abroad and, after gaining experience and expertise, return home and be a ready force for the upcoming IT park in Thimphu.

According to the graduates, their parents would prefer they join the civil service, which is secure and offers many perks related to training and study tour opportunities. For parents, it is very natural to recommend a work where their children may earn better or become Dashos and be close to them.

But times have changed and the civil service can only absorb a certain number. What the graduates have to do is judge the situation by their own interests and perceptions. The government would have hoped that these graduates working in the Silicon Valley of India would have gained immense exposure to venture into new opportunities. Or even refuse to come back and work because of what ICT can offer in the information age.

The young graduates that also did a short training with the Indian ICT companies, unfortunately, failed to understand what they were sent for or didn’t realise its worth. Even after the exposure, they are still uncertain and feel that the civil service is the best job. They are forgetting or have not realised that ICT is Bhutan’s future. And that they were the first lot to get the opportunity makes them more employable.

Communication minister, Lyonpo Nandlal Rai literally begged the students to go back and work and “not waste such an opportunity”. This is because, in two years time, Bhutan’s first IT Park would be ready and they would have been well trained to take up lucrative jobs with the park.

As we head up the information highway, our private sector, the answer to Bhutan’s unemployment problem, needs technical people. The civil service is too small to accommodate a thousand graduates every year. Even money making opportunities, like the senior communication ministry’s officials told the graduates, are outside the civil service.