Raphael John-Lall

Econ­o­mist Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon is ex­pect­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s em­ploy­ment dri­ve to cre­ate large scale em­ploy­ment for the coun­try’s un­der­em­ployed and un­em­ployed.

If ful­ly im­ple­ment­ed the pro­pos­al to em­ploy over 70,000 in two phas­es will pro­vide job sta­bil­i­ty to thou­sands of peo­ple, which will in­crease their pur­chas­ing pow­er and pen­sion­able sta­tus. In­creas­ing em­ploy­ment will al­so for­malise peo­ple who now work in the in­for­mal sec­tor there­by ex­pand­ing tax and NIS con­tri­bu­tions, said Ar­joon. He added that by part­ner­ing with the pri­vate sec­tor in the sec­ond tranche, the gov­ern­ment would share wage costs and re­duce its fis­cal bur­den.

Two weeks ago, Labour Min­is­ter Leroy Bap­tiste told the coun­try to ex­pect 50,000 new jobs in phase two of the na­tion­al re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion dri­ve, which in phase one re­vealed 20,000 job va­can­cies.

The Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion has end­ed make-work em­ploy­ment pro­grammes like Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP), ar­gu­ing that it is cre­at­ing more sus­tain­able and long-term em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties.

The Gov­ern­ment has al­so ar­gued that pro­grammes like CEPEP have tra­di­tion­al­ly cre­at­ed cor­rup­tion and waste lim­it­ed re­sources.

On June 27, the Gov­ern­ment ter­mi­nat­ed the con­tracts of over 300 CEPEP con­trac­tors, which led to an es­ti­mat­ed 10,500 work­ers los­ing their jobs. Less than a week lat­er, on Ju­ly 2, some 4,608 work­ers and con­trac­tors at­tached to the Na­tion­al Re­for­esta­tion and Wa­ter­shed Pro­gramme were fired.

Last Thurs­day, the Prime Min­is­ter promised 50,919 jobs are on the way as she un­veiled an am­bi­tious Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print with a wave of in­fra­struc­ture projects.

The Prime Min­is­ter said cit­i­zens had long been call­ing for jobs, not­ing that the on­go­ing Na­tion­al Re­cruit­ment Dri­ve had at­tract­ed more than 110,000 ap­pli­ca­tions.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, Ar­joon re­ferred to the lat­est un­em­ploy­ment rate, which stands at 3.8 per cent for the sec­ond quar­ter of this year.

“While the sus­pen­sion of the make-work pro­grammes caused some dis­lo­ca­tion, the re­cruit­ment dri­ve to fill over 20,000 va­can­cies will pull the un­em­ploy­ment rate back down, draw­ing many in­to sta­ble, full-time roles in the pub­lic ser­vice in the com­ing months. The ex­tent of the de­cline in the rate will how­ev­er de­pend on how many of these po­si­tions go to the cur­rent­ly un­em­ployed, rather than those al­ready in work but seek­ing bet­ter pay or job se­cu­ri­ty,” he said.

He said it is very like­ly that some of these po­si­tions, es­pe­cial­ly the low­er-skilled ones, will be ab­sorbed by some of the dis­placed work­ers from the sus­pend­ed make-work pro­grammes.

“To sup­port a smooth tran­si­tion, short on­board­ing and skills-train­ing cours­es should be in­tro­duced to help these work­ers adapt ef­fec­tive­ly to the more struc­tured, full-time en­vi­ron­ment of the pub­lic ser­vice.”

Ar­joon de­scribed the Gov­ern­ment’s em­ploy­ment pro­gramme as an im­por­tant one.

“This is the most am­bi­tious job-cre­ation ini­tia­tive in re­cent his­to­ry. With over 110,000 ap­pli­cants, the dri­ve has proven high­ly com­pet­i­tive, at­tract­ing not on­ly the un­em­ployed, but al­so un­der­em­ployed work­ers and pri­vate-sec­tor em­ploy­ees who may be look­ing for greater sta­bil­i­ty, pen­sion­able sta­tus, and oth­er pub­lic ser­vice ben­e­fits. As some of these in­di­vid­u­als shift to pub­lic-sec­tor roles, their for­mer po­si­tions will open up, al­low­ing oth­er job­seek­ers to fill these posts, fur­ther re­duc­ing un­em­ploy­ment.”

He not­ed that a por­tion of ap­pli­cants may come from the in­for­mal econ­o­my, where work­ers op­er­ate out­side of the tax and Na­tion­al In­sur­ance sys­tem. Bring­ing them in­to for­mal, taxed em­ploy­ment will im­prove their fi­nan­cial se­cu­ri­ty while ex­pand­ing the state’s rev­enue and con­tri­bu­tion base.

“The strong turnout al­so re­flects both the lim­it­ed pri­vate-sec­tor job cre­ation in re­cent years and the con­tin­u­ing per­cep­tion that pub­lic-sec­tor em­ploy­ment of­fers bet­ter long-term sta­bil­i­ty and in­clu­sion, par­tic­u­lar­ly among school leavers and re­cent grad­u­ates ea­ger to en­ter the work­force.”

Be­yond low­er­ing un­em­ploy­ment, Ar­joon said this re­cruit­ment dri­ve can al­so re­duce un­der­em­ploy­ment in two im­por­tant ways.

“First, sev­er­al peo­ple cur­rent­ly work a few ir­reg­u­lar hours or short-term gigs. Tran­si­tion­ing them in­to sta­ble, full-time pub­lic-sec­tor jobs al­lows them to work con­sis­tent 40-hour weeks, im­prov­ing in­come sta­bil­i­ty and job se­cu­ri­ty, re­duc­ing time-re­lat­ed un­der­em­ploy­ment.

“Sec­ond, many qual­i­fied in­di­vid­u­als are em­ployed in roles be­low their skill lev­el. By bet­ter align­ing ap­pli­cants with po­si­tions suit­ed to their train­ing, such as in ad­min­is­tra­tion, ICT, health sup­port, da­ta an­a­lyt­ics etc., the dri­ve can curb skills-mis­match un­der­em­ploy­ment, lead­ing to high­er pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, bet­ter pay, and greater op­por­tu­ni­ties for ca­reer ad­vance­ment.”

End of make work

The Gov­ern­ment has come un­der fire for end­ing short term em­ploy­ment pro­grammes like CEPEP, which some ar­gue pro­vide em­ploy­ment for the most vul­ner­a­ble in so­ci­ety.

In re­sponse, Ar­joon said there is no doubt that the tem­po­rary em­ploy­ment pro­grammes served as an im­por­tant so­cial safe­ty net for fi­nan­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble and low­er-skilled in­di­vid­u­als.

“How­ev­er, for sev­er­al per­sons, such pro­grammes may have al­so fos­tered de­pen­den­cy, dis­cour­ag­ing ac­tive job search and skills up­grad­ing need­ed to se­cure per­ma­nent em­ploy­ment, ef­fec­tive­ly func­tion­ing as an un­em­ploy­ment sub­sidy. To this end, the gov­ern­ment must strike a care­ful bal­ance – re­plac­ing these make-work pro­grammes with a new frame­work that tran­si­tions vul­ner­a­ble work­ers in­to roles that cre­ate high­er val­ue, in­creased ef­fi­cien­cy and long-term em­ploy­a­bil­i­ty, while al­so low­er­ing in­equity. This can in­deed be achieved through both tranch­es of the re­cruit­ment dri­ve.”

He ad­vo­cat­ed that there should be tar­get­ted train­ing, re-skilling, and ap­pren­tice­ship ini­tia­tives to help for­mer URP, CEPEP, and re­for­esta­tion work­ers gain the com­pe­ten­cies need­ed for the new pub­lic- and pri­vate-sec­tor jobs be­ing cre­at­ed.

“With­out such sup­port, open com­pe­ti­tion for po­si­tions may favour younger, more ed­u­cat­ed ap­pli­cants, leav­ing low-skilled work­ers per­ma­nent­ly dis­ad­van­taged. Through tar­get­ed ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing, these in­di­vid­u­als can qual­i­fy for sus­tain­able em­ploy­ment and avoid be­ing pushed in­to in­for­mal, un­sta­ble work.”

He al­so not­ed that it is al­so im­por­tant that the sec­ond tranche in­volv­ing pri­vate-sec­tor job cre­ation, fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the Min­istry of Labour, aligns with the coun­try’s di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion push – train­ing and plac­ing peo­ple in sec­tors that dri­ve fu­ture growth, such as ICT, agro-pro­cess­ing, lo­gis­tics, re­new­able en­er­gy etc.

“The ben­e­fits of se­cur­ing such jobs are sig­nif­i­cant – stead­ier in­come, pen­sion con­tri­bu­tions, and the chance to build ex­pe­ri­ence in a struc­tured en­vi­ron­ment, lift­ing many out of work­ing pover­ty and re­duc­ing un­der­em­ploy­ment.”

From a fis­cal stand­point, he said redi­rect­ing funds from make-work pro­grammes to gen­uine em­ploy­ment rep­re­sents a more ef­fi­cient use of pub­lic spend­ing, and can be viewed as an in­vest­ment in self-sus­tain­ing jobs that no longer re­quire on­go­ing sub­si­dies.

“Im­por­tant­ly, by part­ner­ing with the pri­vate sec­tor for the sec­ond tranche of re­cruit­ment, the gov­ern­ment eas­es its fis­cal bur­den, since wage costs are shared with pri­vate em­ploy­ers rather than borne sole­ly by the state.”

Skills train­ing

For­mer chief labour re­la­tions of­fi­cer at the Min­istry of Labour and an in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions con­sul­tant Sabi­na Gomez told Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that she thinks some sort of skills as­sess­ment should have been done with these work­ers that lost their jobs from CEPEP and sim­i­lar pro­grammes.

“Some­times peo­ple are high­ly qual­i­fied but be­cause of a need they end up on these pro­grammes. I know in one case there was some­one who qual­i­fied as an At­tor­ney at Law whilst work­ing on these un­skilled jobs.”

She said some of those 20,000 jobs fall with­in the Ser­vice Com­mis­sion De­part­ment which has its own cri­te­ria.

“The Pres­i­dent of the In­dus­tri­al Court lament­ed at the open­ing of the Law Term that she has 24 va­can­cies of court re­porters. Why not re­cruit qual­i­fied per­sons and prop­er­ly train and groom them to fill these jobs that are scarce.”

She added that some peo­ple may not be mar­ketable or able to match those 20,000 jobs.

“Cut­ting grass might not be the nec­es­sary ex­pe­ri­ence need­ed. They may qual­i­fy as be­ing able to work in a team but what are the trans­fer­able skills. There is a high per­cent­age of fe­male, sin­gle par­ents in these pro­grammes. How do YTEPP and oth­er pro­grammes sup­port these ini­tia­tives in up­skilling work­ers, es­pe­cial­ly sin­gle moth­ers who might not be able to af­ford a babysit­ter and may not be able to work in an 8am-4pm en­vi­ron­ment.”

She con­clud­ed by say­ing that the Man­pow­er Di­vi­sion un­der the Min­istry of Labour could be use­ful in reg­is­ter­ing and screen­ing these work­ers or or­gan­is­ing a work­shop for these em­ploy­ees to pre­pare them for the job mar­ket, with fo­cus on re­sumes, cer­tifi­cates. char­ac­ter ref­er­ences, po­lice cer­tifi­cate of char­ac­ter, de­port­ment and of­fice eti­quette.

“It’s not a sim­ple task but it can be done. CEPEP work­ers ful­filled a need in so­ci­ety. Pover­ty is hav­ing an un­kempt en­vi­ron­ment, rub­bish not be­ing col­lect­ed every day, dirty streets be­ing washed. The wealth of a na­tion is mea­sured by the pride one takes in beau­ti­fy­ing the en­vi­ron­ment.”