Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Con­struc­tion has start­ed on the $1.5 mil­lion Cen­tre for Work­force Re­search and De­vel­op­ment (CWRD) at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine cam­pus. Min­is­ter of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing Fazal Karim said the cen­tre will pro­vide sub­stan­tial labour-mar­ket in­for­ma­tion.

Fund­ing for con­struc­tion was grant­ed by the Ninth Eu­ro­pean De­vel­op­ment Fund (EDF) and com­ple­tion is ex­pect­ed by No­vem­ber. Karim spoke with re­porters on Tues­day at the sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny. Ear­li­er, the min­is­ter de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress at the Of­fice of the Cam­pus Prin­ci­pal. Karim said it was a red-let­ter day.

"We must re­spond to the strate­gies of the coun­try and the re­gion, or else what you're go­ing to have is a bur­geon­ing un­em­ploy­ment sit­u­a­tion, or un­der-em­ploy­ment," he said. Karim said the cen­tre will bring all stake­hold­ers to­geth­er to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion for stu­dents look­ing for jobs. The cen­tre was de­signed to har­monise, stan­dard­ise and co-or­di­nate labour mar­ket process­es in T&T and sub­se­quent­ly for the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my (CSME).

It al­so in­tends to as­sess de­mo­graph­ic and at­ti­tu­di­nal pro­files of the work­force as they re­late to the move­ment of skilled peo­ple with the CSME. Cam­pus prin­ci­pal Prof Clement Sankat said in a time of glob­al re­ces­sion and in­creas­ing com­pe­ti­tion, this type of re­search and analy­sis was of crit­i­cal im­por­tance.

He said: "If our Caribbean coun­tries are to be­come more com­pet­i­tive, we will need to an­tic­i­pate mar­ket trends as well as hu­man ca­pac­i­ty and work­force needs, while at the same time, ad­dress­ing our sys­tem­at­ic vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties as small-is­land de­vel­op­ing states.