PM: More targeted training needed for local, overseas jobs
Published:Thursday | September 8, 2022 | 12:11 AMAinsworth Morris/Staff Reporter
Days after Mico University College President Dr Asburn Pinnock called for the Government to capitalise on the global teacher shortage by training a surplus of educators for overseas institutions, Prime Minister Andrew Holness has noted the need to formalise planned migration schemes for workers.
Pinnock told The Gleaner last week that the move could allow the country to earn from such schemes and also boost resources to supply local schools amid a wave of concern over the number of trained teachers leaving the island.
Holness was of the same mind as he addressed the opening ceremony for the Sister Susan Frazer Educational Complex at the St John Bosco Vocational Training Centre on the grounds of a boys’ home in Hatfield, Manchester.
The centre will focus on training and apprenticeship.
“I believe it is now time that we take a more deliberate and planned approach to the training of labour for our local market and for countries who require our trained labour,” Holness said.
“There is a raging debate about our labour force being exported – or put it another way, our labour force migrating – and as I have said before, and I think we all agree, Jamaica is a free society and our labour is free to move into countries that accept them and want them, and our labour [force] must always try to get the best return for their efforts,” he said.
Holness noted that Jamaica has participated in planned migration schemes for workers before and that other countries also embraced such practices, pointing to the recent recruitment drive for 10,000 workers by a cruise liner.
The Planning Institute of Jamaica has also acknowledged that the country has a mix of strategies to leverage migration for national development.
Holness said that if Jamaica properly plans the use of the labour resources, local demand can be met while also giving those who want to work overseas the opportunity to do so and eventually become foreign-exchange earners.
“We do want our labour [force] to exercise their efforts in Jamaica, and be rewarded in Jamaica, but our history and the nature of the economy and the market forces are such that our labour will leave and will go overseas, but the Jamaican family will only get stronger,” he said.
NEW GROWTH PHASE
A former education minister, Holness stressed that Jamaica has enough institutions to train both for local and overseas demand.
“We are just entering into this new phase of growth and development in our society. We’ve never been in this challenge before where we simply cannot find enough people for the jobs that are there,” Holness said. “It is not because we don’t have the bodies to put into the jobs. The problem is that the human resources that we have are not all trained for the jobs that are available.”
Holness said that, especially for the job export market, more training focus needs to be placed on food and beverage service, the culinary arts, housekeeping, hairdressing, barbering, butchering, animal husbandry, farming, greenhouse technology, contact centre services, customer service and information technology.
“All of these are very important skills that serve, for example, the quick-service industry … . These are critical skills and they are skills that are required in these expanding service areas,” he said.
Holness warned that Jamaica cannot continue to focus on conventional education or conventional training only, but also ensure that training is aligned to the industries that are growing.
He added that institutions need to realign themselves to meet the needs of those most in need and most vulnerable in the population even as they reposition to meet the needs of various industries.