Nadaleen Singh

The Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (SATT) has tak­en steps to im­prove the stan­dard and qual­i­ty of out­put of its labour force by part­ner­ing with the Min­istry of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion (MSTTE) to fur­ther train its work­ers. Pres­i­dent of the as­so­ci­a­tion, Ver­non Per­sad, said trends in the sup­ply of labour showed labour was sea­son­al be­cause of a steady sup­ply of work­ers for the months of June, Ju­ly and Au­gust, when stu­dents have com­plet­ed their ex­am­i­na­tions and are look­ing for em­ploy­ment.

In an in­ter­view, he said the sup­ply de­creas­es from Sep­tem­ber when stu­dents re­turned to school. The as­so­ci­a­tion met with gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials to dis­cuss the is­sue. He said, "Two weeks ago we (SATT) signed a let­ter of un­der­stand­ing with the Min­istry of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion as well as the Na­tion­al Train­ing Agency (NTA) to com­mence the op­er­a­tions of the Su­per­mar­ket Train­ing In­sti­tute (STI)."

Per­sad added: "The STI would al­so house the head­quar­ters of SATT as well as its Sec­re­tari­at where we would be able to de­liv­er to our mem­bers our plans and our train­ing ini­tia­tives." The STI is to be lo­cat­ed on Con­nec­tor Road, Ch­agua­nas. The in­sti­tute is al­so ex­pect­ed to ben­e­fit the SATT's mem­ber­ship, its em­ploy­ees and the pub­lic.

"Ini­tial­ly, the land that we vis­it­ed, there is a struc­ture, and that struc­ture is not a sig­nif­i­cant-sized one, but what it will al­low us to do is, with mi­nor ren­o­va­tions, we would be able to start train­ing where we would not have to in­ter­act with equip­ment," he said. Per­sad said train­ing would be­gin on a phased ba­sis.