Geisha Kow­lessar

In­vest­ment in T&T's hu­man re­sources is a pre­req­ui­site for cap­i­tal ac­cu­mu­la­tion, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai said yes­ter­day. Speak­ing at the open­ing of the Ninth Bi­en­ni­al Con­fer­ence of the Hu­man Re­source Man­age­ment As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (HRMATT) at the Trinidad Hilton, Howai said it is al­so a good in­stru­ment for so­cial co­he­sion and for fight­ing so­cial ex­clu­sion and gen­der dis­crim­i­na­tion. He said hu­man re­sources are im­por­tant to the growth and de­vel­op­ment of T&T: as it af­fords cit­i­zens the op­por­tu­ni­ty to gain knowl­edge and skills which would ben­e­fit the wider so­ci­ety through high­er pro­duc­tiv­i­ty lev­els and in­creased com­pet­i­tive­ness.

"The trans­for­ma­tion of our econ­o­my in­to a knowl­edge based one will pro­duce new in­dus­tries, oc­cu­pa­tions and or­gan­i­sa­tion­al arrange­ments in in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy, biotech­nol­o­gy, food pro­duc­tion, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and oth­ers."New types of skills and ap­proach­es will be re­quired with a greater em­pha­sis on analy­sis, cre­ative think­ing, cu­rios­i­ty, con­tin­u­ous learn­ing, re­wards for knowl­edge cre­ation and greater lev­els of com­mu­ni­ca­tion," Howai added.He said with this vi­sion the im­pli­ca­tions for the coun­try's cur­rent de­mo­graph­ic pro­file and push for growth must al­so be con­sid­ered.

Not­ing that T&T's pop­u­la­tion has re­mained stag­nant at just about 1.3 mil­lion peo­ple over the past decade or more, Howai said this slow rate of pop­u­la­tion growth and its ac­com­pa­ny­ing change in the age pro­file is a cause for con­cern."The pro­ject­ed change in the age pro­file will re­sult in sig­nif­i­cant strain on our fis­cal and so­cial re­sources in the com­ing years and a mean­ing­ful pol­i­cy must be de­vel­oped to ad­dress this prob­lem."This de­mo­graph­ic chal­lenge has been fur­ther com­pound­ed by our brain drain," he said.While ac­knowl­edg­ing that a bur­geon­ing pop­u­la­tion could in­crease the chances of high­er un­em­ploy­ment and so­cial dis­rup­tion, the fi­nance min­is­ter said he be­lieved this con­cern arose from treat­ing peo­ple as li­a­bil­i­ties rather than as­sets.

"It takes a pas­sive and con­trac­tion­al view of the fu­ture rather than an en­tre­pre­neur­ial and ex­pan­sive ap­proach," he said.Howai said Sin­ga­pore, which is slight­ly larg­er than To­ba­go, has sig­naled its in­ten­tion to in­crease its pop­u­la­tion to 7.5 mil­lion over the next decade.He said as T&T moves for­ward an in­te­gral part of its eco­nom­ic plan­ning for growth and de­vel­op­ment must in­clude an in­sight­ful and long term view on the na­tion's de­mo­graph­ic pro­file and a will­ing­ness to em­brace pop­u­la­tion and im­mi­gra­tion poli­cies which en­cour­aged pro­duc­tive, en­tre­pre­neur­ial and high­ly mo­ti­vat­ed in­di­vid­u­als.