KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

While the On-the-Job Train­ing (OJT) Pro­gramme is man­dat­ed to pre­pare young peo­ple for the labour mar­ket, dozens of trainees re­port work­place ha­rass­ment each year, in­clud­ing sex­u­al ha­rass­ment and bul­ly­ing.

Pro­gramme di­rec­tor Joann David told the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on So­cial Ser­vices and Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion that the OJT Pro­gramme record­ed an av­er­age of 50 such cas­es an­nu­al­ly be­tween 2022 and 2025 at work­places where trainees are as­signed. The pro­gramme serves ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4,000 trainees aged 18 to 35.

David, who as­sumed the role in 2019, said con­cerns about stress and work­place ex­po­sure among young trainees led to the in­tro­duc­tion of a psy­chol­o­gist in 2022 on a pi­lot ba­sis.

“Be­tween 2019 and 2022, we ob­served young peo­ple ex­hibit­ing stress and anx­i­ety, but with­in the work en­vi­ron­ment there was al­so bul­ly­ing, sex­u­al ha­rass­ment and oth­er is­sues re­flec­tive of what ex­ists in the wider so­ci­ety,” she said.

The psy­chol­o­gist was en­gaged to as­sess the lev­el of need with­in the pro­gramme. How­ev­er, the con­tract was not re­newed af­ter it ex­pired, and the po­si­tion no longer ex­ists. Trainees re­quir­ing sup­port are now re­ferred to na­tion­al ther­a­peu­tic ser­vices un­der the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment, though David not­ed these ser­vices are heav­i­ly sub­scribed and in­volve long wait­ing lists.

The com­mit­tee al­so heard that place­ment and mar­ket­ing of­fi­cers serve as the main point of con­tact for trainees, with each of­fi­cer over­see­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 200 to 250 in­di­vid­u­als. David ac­knowl­edged that this lim­its con­sis­tent mon­i­tor­ing and en­gage­ment. She added that some trainees are re­luc­tant to re­port in­ci­dents due to fear, al­though in­ter­ven­tions are made once com­plaints are re­ceived.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from com­mit­tee mem­ber Sean Sobers, David said sys­tems are in place to ad­dress com­plaints. She ex­plained that while some re­ports are ini­tial­ly cat­e­gorised as sex­u­al ha­rass­ment, in­ter­nal as­sess­ments have in some in­stances re­clas­si­fied them as bul­ly­ing or gen­er­al work­place ha­rass­ment, based on pro­gramme de­f­i­n­i­tions.

David said of­fi­cers have re­ceived train­ing through the Min­istry of Labour’s con­cil­i­a­tion de­part­ment, in line with na­tion­al sex­u­al ha­rass­ment pol­i­cy.

The com­mit­tee al­so ex­am­ined whether trainees have ac­cess to the Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (EAP) and what mech­a­nisms ex­ist to ad­dress em­ploy­ers found in breach of stan­dards.

David said ef­forts to se­cure EAP ac­cess through the Min­istry of Labour were un­suc­cess­ful but ex­pressed hope that the Min­istry of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing could ex­tend its ser­vices to OJT trainees.

On en­force­ment, she said re­spons­es vary de­pend­ing on the sever­i­ty of cas­es. Some providers are is­sued warn­ings, oth­ers are re­moved from the pro­gramme, and in more se­ri­ous mat­ters, cas­es are re­ferred to the po­lice.

How­ev­er, David said she was not aware of any in­stances in which charges were laid.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia by tele­phone, for­mer labour min­is­ter Stephen Mc­Clashie said the Min­istry recog­nised the need to in­tro­duce a psy­chol­o­gist, not­ing that many young peo­ple en­ter­ing the work­force face sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges.

He said none of the re­port­ed cas­es reached his at­ten­tion and would have been han­dled by the pro­gramme di­rec­tor and the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary. Mc­Clashie added that sex­u­al ha­rass­ment is on­ly one as­pect of a broad­er is­sue af­fect­ing trainees.

“They can’t cope, and they need mech­a­nisms to en­sure that they stay fo­cused. Yes, psy­chol­o­gists were re­quired and re­quest­ed, but I don’t want it to be re­duced sole­ly to sex­u­al ha­rass­ment. The sit­u­a­tion is much broad­er than that,” he said.

Mc­Clashie said he was un­sure when the psy­chol­o­gist’s con­tract ex­pired but main­tained that there is a con­tin­ued need for such sup­port with­in the pro­gramme, giv­en the di­verse back­grounds and chal­lenges faced by trainees.