KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

For more than two decades, thou­sands of young peo­ple have en­tered job train­ing pro­grammes de­signed to pre­pare them for the work­force, but ques­tions per­sist over whether those pro­grammes are con­sis­tent­ly trans­lat­ing in­to em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties.

That con­cern sur­faced dur­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) in­quiry in­to youth un­em­ploy­ment and un­der­em­ploy­ment, where of­fi­cials point­ed to gaps in labour mar­ket da­ta, pol­i­cy co­or­di­na­tion and job place­ment sys­tems, along­side on­go­ing ef­forts to im­prove align­ment be­tween train­ing and em­ploy­ment.

Labour Mar­ket Spe­cial­ist at the Min­istry of Labour, Small and Mi­cro En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment, Dr Justin Joseph, said one of the main is­sues is a mis­match be­tween the skills young peo­ple pos­sess and labour mar­ket de­mand.

“Many times, you may re­alise that, based on an OJT qual­i­fi­ca­tion, there may not be jobs on the mar­ket for them. There may not be an easy tran­si­tion,” Joseph said.

Joseph said the min­istry has not con­duct­ed its own re­search on skills mis­match, re­ly­ing in­stead on sec­ondary da­ta. He said work is on­go­ing to de­vel­op a Labour Mar­ket In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem to con­sol­i­date da­ta and sup­port ev­i­dence-based de­ci­sions.

Com­mit­tee mem­ber Dr Michael Dowlath not­ed that many young peo­ple hold qual­i­fi­ca­tions that are not aligned with labour mar­ket needs, un­der­scor­ing the im­por­tance of up-to-date da­ta to guide train­ing.

Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Na­tal­ie Willis said job va­can­cy sur­veys are con­duct­ed across the civ­il ser­vice, State agen­cies and pri­vate sec­tor, with quar­ter­ly up­dates in­tend­ed to main­tain rel­e­vance. The lat­est cov­ered Jan­u­ary to March 2024, with an­oth­er un­der­way for ear­ly 2025.

She al­so not­ed that train­ing and em­ploy­ment da­ta are not cen­tralised across in­sti­tu­tions. The Min­istry of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing re­ly on in­ter-agency da­ta-shar­ing.

Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Rho­da Pati­ram said her min­istry does not col­lect labour mar­ket da­ta di­rect­ly but works with the Labour Min­istry and oth­er agen­cies to in­form pol­i­cy and pro­grammes. Train­ing in­sti­tu­tions, she said, are ex­pect­ed to pro­vide en­rol­ment and grad­u­ate da­ta while ad­just­ing of­fer­ings based on in­dus­try feed­back.

Di­rec­tor of Re­search, Plan­ning and Tech­ni­cal Ser­vices Lisa Madray-Valadere said in­sti­tu­tions use labour mar­ket feed­back to en­sure train­ing re­mains rel­e­vant to sec­tor needs. Chan­dar Gup­ta Su­per­sad, chair­man of the Na­tion­al Train­ing Agency, said sec­tor ad­vi­so­ry bod­ies drawn from in­dus­tries in­clud­ing en­er­gy, agri­cul­ture, mar­itime and cre­ative in­dus­tries guide train­ing stan­dards.

“The sec­tor ad­vi­so­ry bod­ies have in­di­vid­u­als who can de­ter­mine emerg­ing trends in in­dus­tries so they can guide you on what the emerg­ing trends are in each one of these in­dus­tries,” Su­per­sad said.

He added that na­tion­al oc­cu­pa­tion­al stan­dards are de­vel­oped from this process and up­dat­ed every two to three years.

De­spite this frame­work, Vice Chair­man Khadi­jah Ameen raised con­cerns about trainees mov­ing re­peat­ed­ly through pro­grammes with­out se­cur­ing em­ploy­ment.

“Some of them are in one train­ing pro­gramme af­ter an­oth­er. They com­plete OJT, and they know they can’t go back there. They go on an­oth­er pro­gramme, but what they re­al­ly want is em­ploy­ment, so what is your pol­i­cy to fa­cil­i­tate trainees?” Ameen asked.

Willis said there is cur­rent­ly no na­tion­al em­ploy­ment pol­i­cy, but dis­cus­sions have be­gun with the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­gan­i­sa­tion to de­vel­op one, in­clud­ing a youth em­ploy­ment com­po­nent.

She point­ed to the Na­tion­al Em­ploy­ment Ser­vice, which match­es job seek­ers with va­can­cies through em­ploy­er sub­mis­sions and place­ment of­fi­cers. Chief Man­pow­er Of­fi­cer Monique Abra­ham said ap­pli­cants are in­ter­viewed and matched to va­can­cies, in­clud­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties with­in min­istries and State agen­cies.

Willis said trainees at­tached to the Labour Min­istry, in most cas­es, tran­si­tion in­to em­ploy­ment with­in the sys­tem af­ter train­ing and men­tor­ship.

Joseph al­so said the min­istry is ex­am­in­ing a de­cline in labour force par­tic­i­pa­tion, in­clud­ing among women, not­ing that fe­male par­tic­i­pa­tion re­mains be­low 50 per cent.

“That is very wor­ry­ing. That is one of the ma­jor labour mar­ket is­sues we are faced with,” he said, adding that a study is un­der­way to de­ter­mine con­tribut­ing fac­tors.

The com­mit­tee al­so ex­am­ined en­tre­pre­neur­ship sup­port through the Na­tion­al En­tre­pre­neur­ship De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (NED­CO), where Se­nior Busi­ness In­cu­ba­tion Of­fi­cer Col­in Prov­i­dence said many ap­pli­cants are de­nied fi­nanc­ing due to a lack of col­lat­er­al. Com­mit­tee mem­ber David Nakhid chal­lenged that mod­el, point­ing to struc­tur­al bar­ri­ers faced in low­er-in­come com­mu­ni­ties.

“No­body is go­ing to have ac­cess to col­lat­er­al that we can give them ac­cess to… it is go­ing to be very dif­fi­cult,” he said.

NED­CO CEO Dan­ny Ma­haraj said the agency is re­view­ing its op­er­a­tions fol­low­ing what he de­scribed as a “dra­mat­ic shift” in its loan port­fo­lio pri­or to the cur­rent board, with heavy con­cen­tra­tion in ve­hi­cle-re­lat­ed fi­nanc­ing. He said au­dits of grant pro­grammes had al­so iden­ti­fied “a num­ber of red flags” in ad­min­is­tra­tion as re­forms con­tin­ue.