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Monday, February 17, 2025

Cou­va Cham­ber pres­i­dent:

Import unskilled labour for agriculture

by

20150612

Pres­i­dent of the Cou­va/Point Lisas Cham­ber Li­aquat Ali is sug­gest­ing T&T im­port un­skilled labour from neigh­bour­ing Caribbean is­lands to boost the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor.

He said this is nec­es­sary since the ma­jor­i­ty of the lo­cal labour force is now cer­ti­fied with vary­ing skills.

Speak­ing at a cock­tail re­cep­tion in cel­e­bra­tion of the cham­ber's 25th an­niver­sary on Wednes­day night, Ali not­ed that the col­lapse of oil and gas prices had forced a re­view of the 2014/2015 bud­get.

He said agri­cul­ture could be­come a growth sec­tor for the econ­o­my, par­tic­u­lar­ly be­cause of its ex­port ca­pa­bil­i­ty with the added ben­e­fit of food se­cu­ri­ty for the na­tion.

He said pro­vid­ing food se­cu­ri­ty in an ef­fort to curb the na­tion's im­port bill is crit­i­cal.

While Ali said he wel­comed the em­pha­sis gov­ern­ment has placed on train­ing, re­tool­ing and cer­ti­fy­ing peo­ple to im­prove them­selves, this has meant there are few­er un­skilled work­ers for the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor.

"To move the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor for­ward we need labour," he said.

Ali said Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Fazal Karim is "do­ing an ex­cel­lent job in train­ing peo­ple in every as­pect of skilled work, but the agri­cul­ture sec­tor needs a lot of un­skilled labour."

He said: "No­body wants to go in­to agri­cul­ture...no­body. Every­body leav­ing the uni­ver­si­ty and leav­ing sec­ondary school wants of­fice and desk jobs. No­body wants to cul­ti­vate the land or tend to an­i­mals."

He not­ed that in com­par­i­son to the sit­u­a­tion in agri­cul­ture lo­cal­ly, "in Amer­i­ca the man plant­i­ng the land is king. In T&T the man plant­i­ng the land is dirt. We have to change that mind­set, or we will con­tin­ue to see a de­cline in this sec­tor. We must be able to feed our­selves."

Ali sug­gest­ed that gov­ern­ment de­vel­op an ini­tia­tive sim­i­lar to the Cana­di­an Farm Work Pro­gramme, with­in Cari­com.

"The gov­ern­ment could be the fa­cil­i­ta­tor and the pri­vate sec­tor could dri­ve the project. The cham­ber is will­ing to sit and dis­cuss this is­sue with all stake­hold­ers."

He said 25 years ago when he and four oth­er peo­ple sat in a roti shop and gave birth to the busi­ness as­so­ci­a­tion which evolved in­to the cham­ber, their views and opin­ions were not sought.

"But we have evolved, we have com­mand­ed our right­ful place and we are now re­spect­ed by all ma­jor stake­hold­ers and par­tic­i­pate in all of the na­tion­al de­ci­sion mak­ing process," he said.


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