Pe­ter Christo­pher

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Calls are be­ing made to fur­ther em­pow­er en­tre­pre­neurs and small busi­ness­es in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Dur­ing the Hu­man Re­source Man­age­ment As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go C-Suite Con­ver­sa­tions’ at the Hy­att Re­gency on Wednes­day, it was not­ed that there were sev­er­al peo­ple with­in the cre­ative in­dus­try who were be­ing held back from achiev­ing their full po­ten­tial due to a lack of sup­port or in­fra­struc­ture to aid their de­vel­op­ment.

Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs Dr. Amery Browne ar­gued that Trinidad and To­ba­go had a bur­geon­ing DJ in­dus­try, with many with­in the sec­tor be­ing sought for in­ter­na­tion­al work.

He point­ed to a re­cent en­counter he had at Kam Wah Chi­nese restau­rant when he was ap­proached by two lo­cal DJs who ex­plained their dif­fi­cul­ties in se­cur­ing for­eign work per­mits.

“It fur­ther high­light­ed to me that we have so many of our en­tre­pre­neurs who are re­al­ly push­ing the en­ve­lope and car­ry­ing the flag of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said, adding that he would be speak­ing with Cul­ture Min­istry to dis­cuss mak­ing the process to se­cure these per­mits a bit eas­i­er.

The chal­lenges with­in the cre­ative sec­tor were al­so dis­cussed by Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pro­mot­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion Jerome Pre­cil­la, who said his heart bleeds when well-known en­ter­tain­ers are of­ten forced to throw small fundrais­ers for med­ical ex­pens­es years af­ter en­joy­ing suc­cess with hit songs.

He not­ed that many lo­cal en­ter­tain­ers don’t re­ceive the sup­port in­ter­na­tion­al record­ing artistes get from their mu­sic la­bels and called for a sim­i­lar sup­port struc­ture to be put in place here.

Pre­cil­la al­so re­count­ed the re­luc­tance of lo­cal banks to sup­port his small busi­ness star­tups, as it was said to be too much of a risk.

Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon added it was cru­cial to in­vest in the hu­man re­source ca­pac­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go, es­pe­cial­ly as the coun­try seeks to bol­ster trade, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the ser­vices in­dus­try.

Pres­i­dent of the Hu­man Re­source Man­age­ment As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go Cavelle Joseph St Omer al­so called for prop­er in­vest­ment in tech­nol­o­gy, so that it would strength­en the hu­man cap­i­tal avail­able as op­posed to be­ing a hin­drance.

St Omer said, “Firms must al­so con­sid­er the strate­gic needs of the busi­ness over­all and then pro­vide the tools and re­sources that make sense for em­ploy­ees based on their re­spec­tive job func­tions, lo­ca­tion and needs.”