The Print­ing and Pack­ag­ing In­dus­try Coun­cil (PPIC), a Cab­i­net ap­point­ed com­mit­tee un­der the purview of the Min­istry of Trade, re­cent­ly en­gaged in a se­ries of train­ing ses­sions in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) fa­cil­i­tat­ed by in­dus­try ex­perts.Since their start of the train­ing cours­es in May two cours­es have been suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed.The In­tro­duc­tion to Dig­i­tal Print­ing course was held May 4–June 15 and fa­cil­i­tat­ed by AA Grafix Ltd.

It en­tailed class­room ses­sions as well as site vis­its to lo­cal print­ing com­pa­nies such as Scrip-J Print­ers Ltd and AA Grafix where par­tic­i­pants were ex­posed to a hands-on view of both con­ven­tion­al and dig­i­tal print­ing press­es and var­i­ous fin­ish­ing equip­ment.

The sec­ond course, The Fun­da­men­tals of Print­ing, was held on June 22 was fa­cil­i­tat­ed by Hilton Fran­cis. Par­tic­i­pants were giv­en a ba­sic in­tro­duc­tion to off­set print­ing to pique their in­ter­est in the print­ing in­dus­try and to high­light the scope and op­por­tu­ni­ties avail­able. A to­tal of 46 peo­ple have ben­e­fit­ed from the cours­es to date.

The train­ing in­ter­ven­tions arose from an in­dus­try analy­sis and skills fore­sight re­port com­mis­sioned by the PPIC which re­vealed a ma­jor de­fi­cien­cy in the work­force skills in the print­ing and pack­ag­ing in­dus­try in T&T.This sig­naled a crit­i­cal and im­me­di­ate need to ed­u­cate and equip the cur­rent and up­com­ing work­force in the in­dus­try with the rel­e­vant and re­quired skills and com­pe­ten­cies to cre­ate a more ef­fi­cient in­dus­try.

The PPIC is re­spon­si­ble for over­all de­vel­op­ment and growth of the sec­tor. Cur­rent­ly, there are ap­prox­i­mate­ly 272 firms in the print­ing and pack­ag­ing in­dus­try which is in­te­gral to many oth­er in­dus­tries such as food and bev­er­age, tourism and agri­cul­ture.Fu­ture cours­es for print and pack­ag­ing will be of­fered at the UTT.Speak­ing at a pre­sen­ta­tion cer­e­mo­ny at Nicholas Tow­ers yes­ter­day, Dr Clay­ton Na­jab, chair­man of PPIC, com­mend­ed Scrip J and AA Grafix for mak­ing the first se­ries of train­ing cours­es a suc­cess.

"We should not lim­it the prospec­tive par­tic­i­pants to Trinidad and To­ba­go but con­sid­er ex­pand­ing the of­fer­ing to the Caribbean as we pre­pare and equip the work force for not on­ly to­day but to­mor­row," he said.Narvin Bood­hai, vice pres­i­dent UTT pledged the uni­ver­si­ty's con­tin­ued sup­port in of­fer­ing more short cours­es in 2014 geared to­wards im­prov­ing the print­ing and pack­ag­ing in­dus­try work­force.

Present at the Cer­e­mo­ny were Lindy Ali, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, AA Grafix Ltd; Ja­son Freak­ley, chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer, Scrip J Print­ers Ltd; Daryl Woo, vice chair­man PPIC; Fa­ree­da Ho­sein, mem­ber of PPIC; Su­san Singh-Seer­at­tan, di­rec­tor, busi­ness de­vel­op­ment at UTT and oth­er min­istry rep­re­sen­ta­tives.