The Min­istry of Labour and Small En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment (MOLSED) has sought to clar­i­fy con­fu­sion sur­round­ing the im­ple­men­ta­tion of an in­creased stipend for On the Job Trainees (OJTs).

The Min­istry was re­spond­ing to an ar­ti­cle con­cern­ing the is­sue in a dai­ly news­pa­per, which in­ti­mates that OJTs would be get­ting a ten per­cent in­crease in their stipends.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from the Min­istry, OJTs would have had the in­crease ap­plied since De­cem­ber last year, and as such, would not be re­ceiv­ing an ad­di­tion­al boost in their stipends.

The full text of the Min­istry’s state­ment fol­lows…

MIN­ISTRY OF LABOUR SMALL AND EN­TER­PRISE DE­VEL­OP­MENT
RE: ON-THE-JOB TRAINEES TO GET 10 PER CENT STIPEND IN­CREASE

The Min­istry of Labour and Small En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment (MOLSED) has tak­en note of the ar­ti­cle pub­lished by the Trinidad News­day on Thurs­day, June 11th 2020, ti­tled “On the Job Trainees to get 10 per­cent Stipend In­crease.”

The ar­ti­cle writ­ten by Mr. Sean Dou­glas stat­ed that Min­is­ter of Labour and Small En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment, Sen­a­tor the Ho­n­ourable Jen­nifer Bap­tiste Primus said “Peo­ple en­rolled in the On-the-Job Train­ing (OJT) Pro­gramme can soon ex­pect to en­joy a ten per cent in­crease in their month­ly stipend” when she ap­peared be­fore House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tive’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee in the Par­lia­ment on Wednes­day, June 10th, 2020.

Con­trary to what is re­port­ed in the ar­ti­cle, the Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter in her open­ing state­ment in­di­cat­ed to the Com­mit­tee, that the in­crease to the al­lo­ca­tion was re­quest­ed to sup­ple­ment the 2019/2020 fund­ing of the On-the-Job Train­ing Pro­gramme (OJTP), as a re­sult of the 10% in­crease in stipends which took ef­fect from De­cem­ber 1st, 2019, as pre­sent­ed by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance in his bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion for fis­cal 2020.

There was noth­ing in Min­is­ter’s pre­sen­ta­tion in the Par­lia­ment on Wednes­day, June 10th 2020, to in­di­cate that a fur­ther in­crease will be giv­en. There­fore, the ar­ti­cle is in­ac­cu­rate.

On Oc­to­ber 7th 2019, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, the Ho­n­ourable Colm Im­bert, in the Bud­get Pre­sen­ta­tion stat­ed that Gov­ern­ment would in­crease the On the Job Train­ing Pro­gramme (OJTP) stipend by 10 per­cent and al­so in­crease the in­take for the pro­gramme to 8,000 trainees. This came in­to ef­fect as at De­cem­ber 2019 and ALL OJT Trainees have, to date, re­ceived their stipend up­grade as promised.

The OJTP Di­vi­sion con­tin­ues to re­main com­mit­ted to de­vel­op­ing the youth of the na­tion with the pro­vi­sion of op­por­tu­ni­ties for train­ing through the ac­qui­si­tion of work based knowl­edge and in­dus­try spe­cif­ic ex­pe­ri­ence in a safe work­ing en­vi­ron­ment.

For more in­for­ma­tion on the On-the-Job Train­ing Pro­gramme, you may vis­it our web­site at http://molsed.gov.tt/em­ploy­ment/on-the-job-pro­gramme, or con­tact the Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit of the Min­istry at com­mu­ni­ca­tion­s­molsmed@gov.tt, or call 625-8478 Exts. 1203, 1208 or 1212.