The Bar­ba­dos-based Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB) says it will host a sem­i­nar next month aimed at achiev­ing em­ploy­ment eq­ui­ty and pro­mot­ing in­clu­sion in the re­gion’s labour mar­kets.

It said that the June 19 event will be held un­der the theme “Em­ploy­ment Eq­ui­ty: Pro­mot­ing In­clu­sion in Caribbean Labour Mar­kets”  and will form part of the ac­tiv­i­ties for the bank’s 54th an­nu­al meet­ing sched­uled for  June 17 – 21 in Cana­da.

The CDB said that the event will turn the spot­light on long-stand­ing in­equal­i­ties which af­fect the em­ploy­ment prospects of women, youth, and in­dige­nous pop­u­la­tions.

It said the agen­da promis­es ro­bust dis­cus­sions and ac­tion­able in­sights. It will fea­ture the find­ings of the bank’s com­pre­hen­sive Labour Mar­ket Dif­fer­en­tials study, shed­ding light on the gaps in op­por­tu­ni­ties and dif­fer­en­tial im­pacts on var­i­ous vul­ner­a­ble groups.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the study looks at the fu­ture of work and the job mar­ket out­look in key sec­tors as the Re­gion strives to­wards an in­clu­sive and eq­ui­table labour land­scape.

“In­equitable labour mar­kets hold back in­clu­sive, sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic growth and CDB is tak­ing a lead­er­ship role in dri­ving pos­i­tive change. We look for­ward to this in­valu­able en­gage­ment with our stake­hold­ers and in­ter­est groups as we strength­en our part­ner­ships to fur­ther ad­dress sys­temic in­equal­i­ties and de­vel­op the re­gion,” said CDB’s Act­ing Vice Pres­i­dent of op­er­a­tions, Mrs Therese Turn­er-Jones.

The CDB said that the cross-sec­toral en­gage­ment will con­nect the dots be­tween labour mar­ket out­comes for vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions and im­pacts on eco­nom­ic growth and de­vel­op­ment.

It said there will be a map­ping ex­er­cise to cre­ate tru­ly in­clu­sive and eq­ui­table labour mar­kets. In ad­di­tion, in­no­v­a­tive prac­tices for trans­form­ing labour mar­kets and the fu­ture of work will be ex­plored, and rec­om­men­da­tions from the study will be pre­sent­ed.

“The Caribbean has a tremen­dous op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­de­fine our work­force par­a­digms as economies re­bound from the pan­dem­ic’s im­pacts,” said Ian Du­rant, Di­rec­tor of Eco­nom­ics at the CDB.

“We must act de­ci­sive­ly to lev­el the play­ing field and un­lock our full po­ten­tial, and this sem­i­nar will spark crit­i­cal di­a­logue and iden­ti­fy con­crete so­lu­tions to dis­man­tle the sys­temic bar­ri­ers fac­ing vul­ner­a­ble groups. I urge all stake­hold­ers to join this crit­i­cal con­ver­sa­tion on sus­tain­ing growth in our labour mar­kets.”

The pan­el for the event will in­clude the Bar­ba­dos Min­is­ter of Labour, So­cial Se­cu­ri­ty and Third Sec­tor, Col­in Jor­dan, Se­nior Lec­tur­er and Head of the In­sti­tute for Gen­der and De­vel­op­ment Stud­ies at the Ni­ta Bar­row Unit at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI),  Dr Hal­i­ma DeShong, and Wil­son Pearce, Se­nior Di­rec­tor – Glob­al Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment for the Cana­di­an Com­mer­cial Cor­po­ra­tion as well as Josée Bé­gin, As­sis­tant Chief Sta­tis­ti­cian re­spon­si­ble for So­cial, Health and Labour Sta­tis­tics Field at Sta­tis­tics Cana­da.

BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos, May 15, CMC 

CMC/af/2024