KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

The Em­ploy­ers’ Con­sul­ta­tive As­so­ci­a­tion (ECA) is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to con­sid­er struc­tured train­ing pro­grammes to help stu­dents tran­si­tion from school to the work­place as part of ef­forts to tack­le youth un­em­ploy­ment and un­der­em­ploy­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The rec­om­men­da­tion was made dur­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) in­quiry in­to youth un­em­ploy­ment and un­der­em­ploy­ment held yes­ter­day.

ECA vice-chair­man Neil Der­rick told the com­mit­tee that youth un­em­ploy­ment is not sim­ply about a lack of jobs.

In­stead, he said the is­sue is tied to deep­er struc­tur­al prob­lems, in­clud­ing work­force pre­pared­ness, skills mis­match­es and weak school-to-work tran­si­tion sys­tems.

He said many young peo­ple en­ter the labour mar­ket with­out the com­pe­ten­cies re­quired by em­ploy­ers, point­ing to gaps in both tech­ni­cal train­ing and soft skills such as com­mu­ni­ca­tion, lead­er­ship, punc­tu­al­i­ty and work­place dis­ci­pline.

Der­rick said there is a need to re­think how young peo­ple tran­si­tion from ed­u­ca­tion in­to em­ploy­ment, not­ing that many leave school with­out the skills or sup­port sys­tems need­ed to en­ter the work­force suc­cess­ful­ly.

“We be­lieve that this is a big is­sue, the is­sue of youth un­em­ploy­ment. It is not a sim­ple ... We think the school-to-work tran­si­tion, if we cre­ate a very sol­id frame­work, that’s a place where we can all find ar­eas to sup­port. We will con­tin­ue to en­cour­age our mem­bers be­cause we think they will sig­nif­i­cant­ly ben­e­fit from any of these struc­tured train­ing pro­grammes that pro­vide per­sons ready for work,” Der­rick said.

Al­so ap­pear­ing be­fore the JSC, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Hu­man Re­source Man­age­ment As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (HRMATT) echoed those con­cerns, say­ing em­ploy­ers con­sis­tent­ly re­port de­fi­cien­cies in soft skills among young re­cruits.

They said hu­man re­source pro­fes­sion­als are in­creas­ing­ly grap­pling with how to ad­dress these gaps while bal­anc­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion­al train­ing de­mands.

The com­mit­tee al­so raised con­cerns about the grow­ing im­pact of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) on en­try-lev­el jobs, with stake­hold­ers warn­ing that AI could soon trans­form the fu­ture of work in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, it was not­ed that many young peo­ple pos­sess valu­able trade skills but re­main un­em­ployed or un­der­em­ployed be­cause they lack for­mal cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

Der­rick said more flex­i­ble sys­tems are need­ed to help young peo­ple gain recog­ni­tion for skills de­vel­oped out­side tra­di­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion­al set­tings.

He ar­gued that many youths with prac­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ence in trades such as weld­ing, con­struc­tion and me­chan­i­cal ser­vices re­main locked out of em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties be­cause they can­not for­mal­ly prove their com­pe­tence.

Con­cerns were al­so raised that the cost of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is a bar­ri­er to em­ploy­ment.