SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

In the next four months, the Min­istry of Labour and Small En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment will in­crease the num­ber of peo­ple On the Job Train­ing (OJT) pro­gramme from 4,832 to 6,000.

This fig­ure will rep­re­sent an in­crease of 1,168 trainees be­gin­ning from June to Sep­tem­ber 2019 which will cost tax­pay­ers an ad­di­tion­al $39.2 mil­lion that was re­cent­ly ap­proved by Cab­i­net.

The $39 mil­lion would bring the OJT’s 2019 bud­get al­lo­ca­tion to $234 mil­lion.

The in­take will be­gin from June to Sep­tem­ber.

The an­nounce­ment was made yes­ter­day by Labour Min­is­ter Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus at a press at the min­istry’s head of­fice Tow­er C, In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front, Port-of-Spain.

The pro­gramme which start­ed in 2002 pro­vides for place­ment of trainees for two years rang­ing from lev­els one to five which pays a stipend that ranges from $2,750 to $7,920.

From Jan­u­ary to April, 525 trainees ex­it­ed the pro­gramme.

How­ev­er, Bap­tiste-Primus made it abun­dant­ly clear that such train­ing would on­ly be opened to T&T na­tion­als and not Venezue­lans mi­grants who be­gan reg­is­ter­ing yes­ter­day with the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty that would al­low them to work in T&T for one year.

“There are oth­er jobs out there for the Venezue­lans that are with us. They are hard work­ing peo­ple and I am quite sure they will have no dif­fi­cul­ty in se­cur­ing em­ploy­ment,” Bap­tiste-Primus said.

In re­lay­ing the good news of the ad­di­tion­al in­take of trainees, Bap­tiste-Primus al­so sound­ed a warn­ing to em­ploy­ers not to en­gage in ex­ploit­ing Venezue­lan mi­grants.

She promised that labour in­spec­tors would be vis­it­ing work sites to en­sure that em­ploy­ers do not take ad­van­tage of Venezue­lans and pay them the $15 an hour min­i­mum wage.

On Mon­day, Bap­tiste-Primus said her min­istry will strength­en the Labour In­spec­torate Unit to en­sure that Venezue­lans do not en­counter any dif­fi­cul­ties on their job­sites or from their boss­es.

Any em­ploy­er who ex­ploits or un­der­pays a Venezue­lan, Bap­tiste-Primus said the unit would give him or her time su­fi­cient time to cor­rect their wrong­do­ing and to pay the em­ploy­ee “all the out­stand­ing ar­rears.”

Un­der the Min­i­mum Wage Act, an er­rant em­ploy­er can face sev­er­al fines.

“That is an area that we at the Min­istry of Labour are keep­ing our eyes on in terms of to stop or re­duce lev­els of ex­ploita­tion that we know...we have heard the sto­ries about Venezue­lans be­ing ex­ploit­ed.”

Bap­tiste-Primus cau­tioned em­ploy­ers to de­sist from such moves “and to have a heart to­wards these Venezue­lans. But more­so ad­here to the law and pay the min­i­mum wage.”

Asked if her min­istry had re­ceived re­ports of Venezue­lans be­ing ex­ploit­ed by em­ploy­ers, Bap­tiste-Primus said no.

“You hear the talk...peo­ple talk. Things get through to you through the grapevine. But noth­ing of­fi­cial. I would be very sur­prised if one of them come for­ward be­cause you are talk­ing about what­ev­er lit­tle job that you have it would be up on the ta­ble for salughter...lit­er­al­ly. So un­der those cir­cum­stances they would just bear it.”