RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti-me­dia Re­porter

Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell says the in­ter­na­tion­al em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties pro­vid­ed to T&T na­tion­als in the trav­el and tourism sec­tor should not be seen as a brain drain.

In­stead, he em­pha­sized that these op­por­tu­ni­ties al­low cit­i­zens to earn US dol­lars while build­ing their lives lo­cal­ly.

Mitchell was speak­ing at the PNM's pub­lic po­lit­i­cal ral­ly held at the City Hall au­di­to­ri­um on Har­ris Prom­e­nade, San Fer­nan­do on Thurs­day night.

Ac­cord­ing to Mitchell, over 30,000 in­di­vid­u­als are cur­rent­ly em­ployed in the Trav­el and Tourism Sec­tor.

"When the pan­dem­ic was ap­proach­ing its end and many peo­ple were left job­less, the gov­ern­ment ini­ti­at­ed dis­cus­sions with Cruise Lines in the cruise in­dus­try to se­cure jobs for na­tion­als," he re­vealed.

Mitchell ex­plained that the gov­ern­ment rec­og­nized sig­nif­i­cant op­por­tu­ni­ties in the bil­lion-dol­lar in­ter­na­tion­al cruise busi­ness as the in­dus­try it­self was un­der­go­ing re­or­ga­ni­za­tion af­ter the pan­dem­ic. This led to a cruise re­cruit­ment dri­ve, re­sult­ing in em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for more than 1,000 na­tion­als.

"These are good jobs, where the min­i­mum they earn is around US$900 per month, while they al­so re­ceive train­ing and gain world ex­pe­ri­ences," Mitchell said.

He fur­ther em­pha­sized that this sit­u­a­tion should not be viewed as a brain drain since in­di­vid­u­als typ­i­cal­ly work for six to eight months on du­ty be­fore re­turn­ing home and con­tin­u­ing to sup­port their fam­i­lies and house­holds.

Mitchell not­ed that ad­di­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties are be­ing ex­plored for the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, with more Cruise Lines ap­proach­ing the gov­ern­ment to of­fer em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties to na­tion­als.

He al­so re­vealed that re­cent­ly, MSC Cruise Line re­cruiters were in the coun­try, en­gag­ing with over 200 na­tion­als in the job ap­pli­ca­tion process. The gov­ern­ment has been ac­tive­ly work­ing to en­sure that in­di­vid­u­als in these sec­tors have ac­cess to op­por­tu­ni­ties, Mitchell added.

He al­so said that col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Min­istry of Tourism, Trade, and In­dus­try has been in­stru­men­tal in pro­mot­ing the pur­chase of lo­cal­ly made goods by the Cruise Lines.

Roy­al Caribbean, he said, has al­ready agreed to in­clude Carib Beer on their ships and of­fer the bev­er­age at the Roy­al Caribbean Re­port Is­land Co­co­Cay.

"An­gos­tu­ra al­ready has their Bit­ters on the Ships, and they are present­ly in talks with the Cruise Lines to of­fer their Rum and non-Al­co­holic Bev­er­ages like An­gos­tu­ra Chill on board the ships," he an­nounced.

Mitchell al­so not­ed that Cruise Line ex­ec­u­tives have ex­pressed in­ter­est and will be at­tend­ing the Man­u­fac­tur­ing As­so­ci­a­tion's Trade and In­dus­try Con­fer­ence in Ju­ly.

On the top­ic of petro­chem­i­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing, Mitchell said dis­cus­sions are on­go­ing be­tween En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and methanol pro­duc­ers in Point Lisas to per­suade the Cruise In­dus­try to adopt methanol as an al­ter­na­tive and re­new­able fu­el.

He not­ed that the Cruise In­dus­try has com­mit­ted to re­duc­ing its car­bon emis­sions to ze­ro by 2050.

Mean­while, San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning said bil­lions of dol­lars have been wast­ed in T&T over the years be­cause of mis­man­age­ment.

"Bil­lions of dol­lars that lined the pock­ets of fi­nanciers. Do you know why I shake my head? Be­cause like every MP in this coun­try - in­clud­ing the ones on the oth­er side, I see and hear the needs of my con­stituents around them every day. That mon­ey, hid­den sur­rep­ti­tious­ly, could have been in­vest­ed in our peo­ple years ago!! Could have gone to­wards sav­ing lives and paving roads," he added.

He said some pub­lic of­fi­cials be­lieve gov­er­nance is a li­cense to a feed­ing fren­zy.

"Decades lat­er, the price is still be­ing paid," he added. Man­ning warned the con­stituents of San Fer­nan­do West not to "put God out of your thoughts and vote UNC."

The Op­po­si­tion par­ty has al­ready claimed vic­to­ry in the mar­gin­al San Fer­nan­do West seat hav­ing held its po­lit­i­cal meet­ing at Na­pari­ma Col­lege ear­li­er this week.