Nadaleen Singh

Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Fazal Karim says the labour short­age has eased and he be­lieves his re­cent tours of most of the man­u­fac­tur­ing plants in T&T con­tributed to that im­prove­ment. For sev­er­al months mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty had been com­plain­ing about a short­age in labour which they blamed on Gov­er­ment pro­grammes such as Cepep and the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) which were at­tract­ing most of the avail­able man­pow­er.

Speak­ing to re­porters fol­low­ing yes­ter­day's sign­ing of a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing (MoU) be­tween Red Deer Col­lege (RDC), the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT) and NESC, Karim said the labour short­age had been "re­duced sub­stan­tialy." "I want to con­tin­ue that ex­er­cise of Meet the Man­u­fac­tur­ers" and find­ing out from them what are the short­ages which still ex­ist. It is im­por­tant for us to re­fine the cur­ricu­lum which em­ploy­ers would say that they re­quire.

It is im­por­tant to en­sure that (the grad­u­ates) have mar­ket rel­e­vant skills." Karim wants NESC and UTT to meet with the man­u­fac­tur­ers. He said the MoU fa­cil­i­tates train­ing of tech­ni­cal and vo­ca­tion­al teach­ers at the Cana­da-based RDC. "The Min­istry of ed­u­ca­tion is a part­ner in this project. We will be train­ing the teach­ers in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem to­wards prepar­ing them bet­ter as tech­ni­cal and vo­ca­tion­al teach­ers," he ex­plained.

"Teach­ers are the first de­liv­er­ers of the cur­ricu­lum and the com­pe­tence of the teach­ers is crit­i­cal­ly im­por­tant for the learn­ing out­comes and the qual­i­ty of the grad­u­ate," he said. "It is about en­sur­ing that the teach­ers have the req­ui­site work ready skills that they can pass on to our stu­dents." In re­sponse to com­plaints about a labour short­age, in mid-Jan­u­ary Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar met with mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

Of­fi­cials of the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of T&T (Am­chamTT) and the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) were man­dat­ed to de­vise a plan to fil­ter work­ers from Cepep in­to the pri­vate sec­tor. In late May, ten man­u­fac­tur­ers signed a MoU with the Min­istry of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion to ad­dress some of the labour prob­lems they have faced and since then sev­er­al ini­tia­tives have been im­ple­ment­ed to treat with the short­age.