Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Last week, Guardian Me­dia Ltd ex­am­ined the cur­rent state of T&T’s job mar­ket and the work­ing en­vi­ron­ment new uni­ver­si­ty grad­u­ates would be en­ter­ing as they be­gin their ca­reers.

While many grad­u­ates strug­gle to find jobs due to sat­u­ra­tion and “de­gree in­fla­tion,” (the prac­tice of em­ploy­ers hav­ing un­nec­es­sar­i­ly high en­try re­quire­ments for jobs) some grad­u­ates pos­sess qual­i­fi­ca­tions specif­i­cal­ly suit­ed to pro­fes­sions which may have lim­it­ed va­can­cies lo­cal­ly.

These sit­u­a­tions can lead pro­fes­sion­als to look out­side T&T for ca­reer op­por­tu­ni­ties.

The loss of skilled work­ers due to mi­gra­tion al­so known as “brain drain,” sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pacts the long-term de­vel­op­ment of Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States (SIDS), like Trinidad and To­ba­go.

While high­er salaries and a bet­ter qual­i­ty of life are key fac­tors in con­vinc­ing pro­fes­sion­als to stay, such changes can on­ly come about through mul­ti-stake­hold­er sup­port.

With a lim­it­ed num­ber of avail­able job op­por­tu­ni­ties when they grad­u­ate, many young peo­ple are seek­ing em­ploy­ment out­side of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Last year, at the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce’s Eco­nom­ic Out­look Fo­rum, it was re­port­ed that most com­pa­nies were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing be­tween ze­ro to five per cent at­tri­tion due to staff mi­gra­tion.

Fig­ures pro­vid­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine, show that 2,396 un­der­grad­u­ate stu­dents grad­u­at­ed this year, with the Fac­ul­ty of So­cial Sci­ences hav­ing the high­est num­ber of grad­u­ates.

In re­sponse to these fig­ures, econ­o­mist Dr Vaalmi­ki Ar­joon said brain drain low­ers the po­ten­tial for in­creased en­tre­pre­neur­ial ac­tiv­i­ties de­creas­ing the abil­i­ty of the pri­vate sec­tor to in­no­vate and be­come more com­pet­i­tive.

Dur­ing a pan­el dis­cus­sion at the fourth In­ter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States in An­tigua in June, out­mi­gra­tion was iden­ti­fied as one of sev­er­al ma­jor chal­lenges af­fect­ing the Caribbean.

Pres­i­dent of the Hu­man Re­source Man­age­ment As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (HRMATT) Cavelle Joseph-St Omer said glob­al­i­sa­tion to­geth­er with growth in In­for­ma­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Tech­nol­o­gy (ICT) has added to the im­pact loss of skilled work­ers has had lo­cal­ly.

“The re­al­i­ty is that a num­ber of de­vel­oped coun­tries have lib­er­alised their poli­cies for the ad­mis­sions of high­ly skilled pro­fes­sion­als.

“The prob­lem lies in that this de­mand is met by na­tion­als of coun­tries like Trinidad and To­ba­go, trig­ger­ing an ex­o­dus and re­sult­ing in a brain drain.”

UWI: Prop­er com­pen­sa­tion, pri­vate sec­tor sup­port need­ed

Joseph-St Omer says while there is no sin­gle so­lu­tion to brain drain, she be­lieves in­vest­ments in emerg­ing sec­tors while stim­u­lat­ing tra­di­tion­al fields would part­ly mit­i­gate the loss of skilled labour.

She said such a re­sponse should be joint­ly led by lead­ers in the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions via email, the UWI cam­pus ad­min­is­tra­tion ac­knowl­edged the sever­i­ty of the prob­lems caused by brain drain, de­scrib­ing it as a “crit­i­cal chal­lenge.”

The UWI not­ed that grad­u­ates will be at­tract­ed to oth­er coun­tries with high­er salaries or in­creased fund­ing for re­search and de­vel­op­ment.

The uni­ver­si­ty said that a “triple he­lix” mod­el which in­te­grates the com­bined ef­forts of acad­e­mia, gov­ern­ment and pri­vate in­dus­try was in­tro­duced to strength­en part­ner­ships and cre­ate more op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cal pro­fes­sion­als, but cen­tral to the suc­cess of these ini­tia­tives is ad­e­quate re­mu­ner­a­tion.

“By fos­ter­ing col­lab­o­ra­tions with both lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al in­dus­tries, we are cre­at­ing more at­trac­tive ca­reer op­por­tu­ni­ties with­in Trinidad and To­ba­go. For in­stance, our cam­pus is in­volved in ini­tia­tives that sup­port cli­mate-smart in­no­va­tion, biotech­nol­o­gy, and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment—fields that are cru­cial for both lo­cal and glob­al progress.

“We be­lieve too, that the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tors al­so need to re-eval­u­ate their com­pen­sa­tion of high­ly qual­i­fied in­di­vid­u­als.

“Our na­tion al­so needs to up­grade its skills base if we are to at­tain gen­uine de­vel­op­men­tal strides.”

The UWI added that an in­te­gral part of their pro­grammes has been to in­cul­cate a sense of so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty among stu­dents.

This aware­ness, they hoped would en­cour­age grad­u­ates to re­main in the re­gion and con­tribute to its de­vel­op­ment.

Few­er OJTs al­lo­cat­ed in pub­lic sec­tor

The On-The-Job Train­ing (OJT) pro­gramme was found­ed in March 2002 and is in­tend­ed to pro­vide prac­ti­cal work ex­pe­ri­ence for stu­dents with sec­ondary or ter­tiary-lev­el qual­i­fi­ca­tions.

The pro­gramme, which op­er­ates un­der the Min­istry of Labour, has guid­ed more than 150,000 trainees to jobs as of 2022.

Un­der the pro­gramme’s stipend struc­ture, Lev­el 4 trainees (grad­u­ates pos­sess­ing an un­der­grad­u­ate de­gree), earn $7,562.50 month­ly, while Lev­el 5 trainees (grad­u­ates with a post­grad­u­ate de­gree) earn $8,712 month­ly.

Da­ta from the Min­istry of Labour in­di­cates that the num­ber of OJTs as­signed to pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions has pro­gres­sive­ly de­clined from 2019 to the present.

The num­ber of in­takes with uni­ver­si­ty de­grees for the OJT pro­gramme peaked with 1’340, uni­ver­si­ty-cer­ti­fied trainees be­tween Oc­to­ber 2020 and Sep­tem­ber 2021, but dropped to 777 trainees reg­is­tered be­tween Oc­to­ber 2023 and Sep­tem­ber 2024.

These suc­ces­sive de­creas­es in the num­ber of trainees en­ter­ing the pro­gramme have al­so been re­flect­ed in low­er num­bers of uni­ver­si­ty-qual­i­fied trainees be­ing as­signed to pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions for work.

The da­ta re­port­ed that 1,306 trainees were as­signed to pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions from Oc­to­ber 2020 to Sep­tem­ber 2021. This fig­ure fell to 890 for the fol­low­ing pe­ri­od of Oc­to­ber 2021 to Sep­tem­ber 2022.

There was an­oth­er slight dip to 819 trainees in pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions for the fol­low­ing pe­ri­od of Oc­to­ber 2022 to Sep­tem­ber 2023. For the lat­est cy­cle of Oc­to­ber 2023 to Sep­tem­ber 2024, on­ly 694 trainees were as­signed to pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions.

No fur­ther in­for­ma­tion was pro­vid­ed for what led to the drop in the as­sign­ment of trainees to the pub­lic sec­tor.

At a ca­reer fair in Oc­to­ber, Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Allyson West said there were 13,000 per­ma­nent job va­can­cies in the pub­lic sec­tor.

Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions through the min­istry’s cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions unit via email on Oc­to­ber 28 but did not re­ceive any re­sponse up to Tues­day af­ter­noon.

The ques­tions sought to un­der­stand what the re­quire­ments are for the 13,000 jobs re­port­ed and what mech­a­nisms are in place to pre­vent the loss of skilled pro­fes­sion­als to mi­gra­tion.