Joshua Seemu­n­gal

An over­whelm­ing re­sponse by T&T na­tion­als to calls for jobs with Roy­al Caribbean has led the cruise line com­pa­ny to add an­oth­er day of reg­is­tra­tion at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts in Port-of-Spain.

The com­pa­ny said it will re­turn to NA­PA on Fri­day to ac­com­mo­date those who did not get through yes­ter­day.

Thou­sands of peo­ple lined up from ear­ly yes­ter­day to late in­to the evening, hop­ing to get in­to NA­PA to reg­is­ter.

In the end, the de­mand was so high that the process, a joint project be­tween Roy­al Caribbean and the Min­istry of Tourism, was just too much.

“There are peo­ple in their thou­sands here. That speaks to the need for jobs and this is what we are try­ing to do here at Roy­al Caribbean Group to as­sist with job cre­ation. For me, it’s heart­break­ing to see so many peo­ple stand out here. We are try­ing our best,” Wendy Mc­Don­ald, Roy­al Caribbean’s Re­gion­al Vice Pres­i­dent of Gov­ern­ment Re­la­tions for the Caribbean, said.

“We were sup­posed to be Tues­day through Thurs­day (in San Fer­nan­do on Wednes­day and To­ba­go on Thurs­day) but we’ve de­cid­ed that we are go­ing to be here, at NA­PA again, on Fri­day. What we want to do right now is set up an ap­point­ment sys­tem for peo­ple we don’t see to­day. We will see those peo­ple on Fri­day.”

Mc­Don­ald said while Roy­al Caribbean made the com­mit­ment with the T&T Gov­ern­ment to hire 2,000 peo­ple, she nev­er imag­ined that so many peo­ple would turn up yes­ter­day.

The process was sup­posed to start at 9 am, as ad­ver­tised, but peo­ple lined up from as ear­ly as 7 am.

But the or­der­ly lines that were in place ini­tial­ly soon dis­si­pat­ed, leav­ing chaos.

Hundreds wait in line with resumes in hand for a job interview during the Royal Caribbean International Employment Drive at the National Academy for the Performing Arts in Port-of-Spain yesterday.

ANISTO ALVES

“We brought down a team of 21 peo­ple to do the in­ter­views and they are all in there to do their best. We have each in­ter­view­er do­ing three in­ter­views at a time, so we could try to move the crowd as quick­ly as pos­si­ble,” Mc­Don­ald said.

A 19-year-old woman, who did not want to share her name, said she ar­rived at NA­PA from San­gre Grande at 7 am.

Sweaty and ex­haust­ed, she de­scribed the scene as dis­or­gan­ised and said she left the line be­cause of a pend­ing pan­ic at­tack.

“They are not let­ting any­body in un­til they make lines and peo­ple are not lis­ten­ing to in­struc­tions. It’s a bac­cha­nal in front there. The peo­ple in front are not mak­ing lines. A whole set of sweaty peo­ple quar­relling. I was go­ing to wait un­til 4 pm but at this point in time, I don’t see any­thing mov­ing and it’s 12,” she said.

“It’s a great op­por­tu­ni­ty. Trav­el­ling the world, help­ing oth­er peo­ple, speak­ing to peo­ple, get­ting to know peo­ple’s life sto­ries. To put my­self out there is some­thing I want to do,” the woman, look­ing for her third job, said about the op­por­tu­ni­ty.

An­oth­er man, who al­so didn’t want to be named, came out ear­ly with his son, both of them hop­ing to com­plete the ap­pli­ca­tion process.

Say­ing he was sur­prised by the mas­sive turnout, he said he got there at 9.30 am. Two hours lat­er, and hav­ing made no progress in get­ting in­side, he aban­doned the process.

“There is no or­der. There is no sys­tem. What they are say­ing is that they didn’t ex­pect this crowd and that is sur­pris­ing to me be­cause if you put out your ad­ver­tise­ment for 2,000 va­can­cies and you in­di­cate that en­try-lev­el is just fin­ish­ing pri­ma­ry school - no O’lev­els, then you should ex­pect a crowd,” he said.

Hundreds turned up as they wait in line with resumes in hand for a job interview during the Royal Caribbean International Employment Drive at the National Acamady for the Performing Arts, NAPA Frederick, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

ANISTO ALVES

“What we will try to do is get to one of the oth­er lo­ca­tions - ei­ther South or To­ba­go, and prob­a­bly get there ear­ly and my hope will be that the au­thor­i­ties would put a sys­tem in place to man­age the crowd. We don’t mind wait­ing but we want to see a sys­tem that says things are pro­gress­ing.”

The Tourism Min­istry signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing with Roy­al Caribbean In­ter­na­tion­al that will see the cruise line hire 2,000 Trin­bag­o­ni­ans.

Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell said in a state­ment yes­ter­day that his min­istry “sees this ini­tia­tive as a means of sup­port­ing eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery and re­duc­ing un­em­ploy­ment rate that de­vel­oped as a re­sult of the pan­dem­ic.” “We con­tin­ue in our com­mit­ment to en­sure that those who are trained in ar­eas such as hos­pi­tal­i­ty, food and bev­er­age man­age­ment, culi­nary arts or in the field of en­ter­tain­ment are af­ford­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to work with one of the largest cruise lines in the world,” he added.

Ap­pli­cants are re­quired to fill out an on­line ap­pli­ca­tion form and up­load rel­e­vant doc­u­ments.

The re­cruit­ment fair moves to the South­ern Acad­e­my for Per­form­ing Arts in San Fer­nan­do to­day and to To­ba­go to­mor­row be­fore re­turn­ing to NA­PA on Fri­day.

Roy­al Caribbean has out­lined plans to rein­tro­duce Trinidad and To­ba­go as a des­ti­na­tion for its up­com­ing cruise sea­son, start­ing in No­vem­ber.

A large turned up at NAPA looking for jobs yesterday.

ANISTO ALVES

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