The Prime Min­is­ter, Dr Kei­th Row­ley, used the open­ing of Carib Brew­ery’s new bot­tling line last week to high­light the need for green­er pro­duc­tion process­es in T&T.

He al­so used Carib’s in­vest­ment in its pro­duc­tion process as an ex­am­ple of how our econ­o­my must di­ver­si­fy and be­come less de­pen­dent on the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor.

At the same event, the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter, Mar­vin Gon­za­les, spoke about new poli­cies that will help pro­tect the en­vi­ron­ment and, in the process, de­vel­op a big­ger and more ef­fec­tive waste man­age­ment sec­tor in the coun­try.

None of this is con­tro­ver­sial stuff, as we all know it is crit­i­cal for T&T to broad­en its eco­nom­ic base ahead of an ex­pect­ed re­duced glob­al de­mand for hy­dro­car­bons and, even­tu­al­ly, the end of our oil and gas re­serves.

The chal­lenge, as usu­al, is in how we turn these nice words in­to ac­tion, es­pe­cial­ly when it comes to the labour force and con­di­tions re­quired to de­vel­op such sec­tors.

Take waste man­age­ment, for in­stance.

First of all, rub­bish is good mon­ey: the glob­al waste man­age­ment in­dus­try is cur­rent­ly worth over US$1.3 bil­lion and is ex­pect­ed to grow at around five per cent an­nu­al­ly, hit­ting the US$2 bil­lion mark in six or so years from now.

That fig­ure may come out to be even high­er giv­en how gov­ern­ments all over the world have been push­ing for more strin­gent en­vi­ron­men­tal poli­cies, part­ly to al­le­vi­ate the is­sues cre­at­ed by pol­lu­tion and land­fill sites, and part­ly to re­duce car­bon emis­sions (in some cas­es, like with T&T, with tar­gets en­shrined in in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ments).

T&T could and should fur­ther de­vel­op its waste man­age­ment in­dus­try to im­prove the way it han­dles both in­dus­tri­al and do­mes­tic waste and, in the process, po­ten­tial­ly serve oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion.

We don’t need a re­minder that prop­er waste man­age­ment is more than ur­gent; just look at how the coast next to our ur­ban cen­tres gets cov­ered with plas­tic bot­tles and oth­er types of de­tri­tus af­ter just a bit of rain.

The ques­tion is how we should de­vel­op the sec­tor and whether we have the right re­quire­ments to do so.

One crit­i­cal is­sue, just like with oth­er new ar­eas for de­vel­op­ment like the green en­er­gy sec­tor, is labour.

In the­o­ry, we do have spare ca­pac­i­ty in the labour mar­ket to em­ploy peo­ple to work in the sec­tor, but what is less clear is whether we have the right peo­ple, with the right skills to fill all the jobs re­quired.

Waste man­age­ment is a lot more than ‘just’ un­skilled labour­ers col­lect­ing garbage from hous­es or busi­ness­es on a reg­u­lar ba­sis (al­though even that re­quires spe­cif­ic train­ing and prepa­ra­tion).

The kind of waste man­age­ment ac­tiv­i­ty we are talk­ing about is much more than that: it is about high­ly com­plex ways to re­cov­er reusable re­sources and dis­pose of the rest in an en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly ac­cept­able way (in­clud­ing en­er­gy pro­duc­tion through non-pol­lut­ing in­cin­er­a­tion of or­gan­ic mat­ter).

It is al­so about de­vel­op­ing a size­able and much more ro­bust re­cy­cling in­dus­try, ca­pa­ble of turn­ing waste in­to reusable ma­te­r­i­al for new prod­ucts.

These ac­tiv­i­ties re­quire high­ly skilled work­ers to op­er­ate of­ten tech­no­log­i­cal­ly com­plex in­dus­tri­al process­es. And we may not have most or all of them, at least for now.

Then, if we are to com­pete with neigh­bour­ing coun­tries to make T&T a re­gion­al base for waste man­age­ment ser­vices, we need to have the right com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment be­yond a high­ly skilled work­force.

We need sim­pler ways of do­ing busi­ness, and we need to wel­come for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment in the sec­tor with­out the usu­al xeno­pho­bic at­tacks by some quar­ters, es­pe­cial­ly the trade unions.

That is for a sim­ple rea­son: we don’t have all the ex­per­tise or tech­nol­o­gy to de­vel­op the sec­tor and may not have enough hu­man and fi­nan­cial cap­i­tal for the more in­vest­ment-in­ten­sive el­e­ments of the waste man­age­ment pro­duc­tion chain.

None of these is­sues are im­pos­si­ble chal­lenges: we can and must cre­ate a more busi­ness- and in­vest­ment-friend­ly en­vi­ron­ment for all, in­clud­ing for­eign play­ers, whilst en­sur­ing they all play by the same rules (in­clud­ing pay­ing their tax­es and be­ing good em­ploy­ers).

And we can im­prove both the le­gal and cul­tur­al frame­work of our in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions to make em­ploy­ment bet­ter while build­ing the flex­i­bil­i­ty and longer-term think­ing that our econ­o­my des­per­ate­ly needs.

Fail­ure to make these changes re­gard­ing the labour force and the busi­ness cli­mate will make it con­sid­er­ably hard­er for us to meet the am­bi­tions of a di­ver­si­fied econ­o­my tap­ping in­to growth sec­tors such as green en­er­gy and waste man­age­ment.

Sad­ly, the Gov­ern­ment’s si­lence as far as a com­pre­hen­sive and co­her­ent ed­u­ca­tion and skills pol­i­cy, from cra­dle to re­tire­ment, re­mains a ma­jor con­cern.

Let’s be clear: we will be for­ev­er play­ing catch-up with the world if we don’t look care­ful­ly at how we will de­vel­op the skills need­ed for this cen­tu­ry’s econ­o­my. More than that, we may be left so be­hind that fu­ture gen­er­a­tions will nev­er for­give our fail­ure to deal with the mat­ter.

And this is an is­sue that can eas­i­ly bring the labour move­ment, the Gov­ern­ment and busi­ness to­geth­er as a bet­ter-skilled, more ef­fi­cient, and mod­ern work­force. This is good news for every­one: high­er skills tend to at­tract bet­ter wages, and more pro­duc­tive work­forces gen­er­ate bet­ter out­comes, in­clud­ing high­er prof­itabil­i­ty, which, in turn, gen­er­ates more tax­es for the state.

Giv­en the PM’s strong words about the need for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and mod­erni­sa­tion, and for the sake of cur­rent and fu­ture em­ploy­ers, it is about time we re­al­ly look at labour skills—cur­rent and fu­ture—with at least a de­gree of se­ri­ous­ness.