Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

The man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, to­geth­er with a pro­duc­tive work­force, re­mains one of the main dri­vers of eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, says Dr Mahin­dra Ramdeen, CEO of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA).

Dr Ramdeen made the re­mark as the TTMA signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Co­op­er­a­tion with the Youth Train­ing and Em­ploy­ment Part­ner­ship Pro­gramme (YTEPP) on Wednes­day at YTEPP’s head of­fice in Wood­ford Lodge, Ch­agua­nas.

He said there is a crit­i­cal need to build ca­pac­i­ty in hu­man re­source de­vel­op­ment and to strength­en the skill sets of the na­tion­al work­force.

“T&T must make it­self ready to face any re­al­i­ty that the coun­try may en­counter,” he not­ed, cit­ing the dev­as­ta­tion caused by Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa in Ja­maica and point­ing out that the TTMA had as­sist­ed in the re­lief ef­forts there.

Dr Ramdeen un­der­scored the im­por­tance of prepar­ing young peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly for op­por­tu­ni­ties out­side the oil and gas sec­tor.

“We have to di­ver­si­fy T&T; we have to earn for­eign ex­change and the on­ly way to earn for­eign ex­change is to sell our goods and ser­vices. Right now, one of our ma­jor goods—oil and gas—is di­min­ish­ing, so we have to grow the non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor. But we can­not do that with­out one key in­gre­di­ent—labour.”

He lament­ed the de­fi­cien­cy of skilled work­ers in the labour force, stat­ing that pro­duc­tiv­i­ty lev­els have been de­clin­ing. The non-en­er­gy sec­tor, he said, cur­rent­ly em­ploys around 60,000 peo­ple, but the TTMA con­tin­ues to face chal­lenges in find­ing suit­able can­di­dates to fill skilled po­si­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to Ramdeen, peo­ple don’t want to work, are un­qual­i­fied, and in some cas­es, de­mand very high wages. He al­so sug­gest­ed that cer­tain gov­ern­ment so­cial pro­grammes have re­duced the avail­abil­i­ty of the work­force.

He added that the tourism sec­tor should al­so be ex­plored as part of the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion dri­ve, es­pe­cial­ly in ar­eas such as sports, ed­u­ca­tion and eco-tourism.

CEO of YTEPP, Mont­gomery Guy, said the Mem­o­ran­dum of Co­op­er­a­tion will ad­vance work­force de­vel­op­ment for the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor and oth­er ar­eas of the na­tion­al econ­o­my.

Guy said un­der this co­op­er­a­tion, YTEPP will com­mit to col­lab­o­rat­ing with the TTMA to de­vel­op and pro­vide cur­ric­u­la for skills train­ing pro­grammes that di­rect­ly ad­dress the needs of the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor and its mem­bers.

The col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the or­gan­i­sa­tions will al­so re­sult in tar­get­ed re­search, to ef­fec­tive­ly iden­ti­fy and re­spond to the labour mar­ket de­mands of the in­dus­try with­in which the TTMA’s mem­bers op­er­ate.

The two or­gan­i­sa­tions would al­so pro­vide qual­i­fied tu­tors and train­ing fa­cil­i­ta­tors who will de­liv­er in­struc­tion that meets the stan­dards ex­pect­ed by part­ners and em­ploy­ers.

He said, “Through these ini­tia­tives, we aim to not on­ly fill ex­ist­ing skills gaps, but to cre­ate a sus­tain­able pipeline of tal­ent; young men and women, who are equipped, adapt­able, and ready to con­tribute, to the growth, and com­pet­i­tive­ness of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­try.”