T&T’s most es­sen­tial re­source and dri­ver of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty is not oil and gas, but rather its hu­man cap­i­tal which needs to be sal­vaged, says econ­o­mist Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon as he com­ment­ed on re­cent sta­tis­tics shared by EY on the wor­ry­ing im­pact of brain drain which con­tin­ues to plague this coun­try.

Ac­cord­ing to Ar­joon con­tin­u­ous­ly los­ing thou­sands of high­ly-skilled and tech­ni­cal peo­ple re­mains harm­ful to lo­cal pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, GDP growth and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

“Not on­ly is there a loss in the in­come that they can gen­er­ate for the econ­o­my, but al­so the tax rev­enues they could have con­tributed are lost. The im­pact can al­so dif­fer across pro­fes­sions, for in­stance, we cur­rent­ly have a short­age of spe­cial­ist doc­tors as many go abroad and opt not to re­turn home which de­prives some pa­tients in the pub­lic ser­vice of get­ting fo­cused treat­ment and surg­eries in a time­ly man­ner, and it de­te­ri­o­rates the qual­i­ty of our med­ical care,” he ex­plained.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Ar­joon not­ed sev­er­al en­gi­neers and those skilled in the en­er­gy sec­tor were al­ready lost when Petrotrin closed as they could not get jobs in oth­er lo­cal en­er­gy com­pa­nies, caus­ing them to mi­grate to oth­er oil-based economies like Guyana and the Mid­dle East.

At the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of T&T’s Eco­nom­ic Out­look fo­rum which was re­cent­ly held, EY not­ed that most com­pa­nies are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing some lev­el of staff mi­gra­tion, with the ma­jor­i­ty (70 per cent) ex­pe­ri­enc­ing be­tween ze­ro per cent to five per cent at­tri­tion through mi­gra­tion.

Three per cent of the sur­vey’s par­tic­i­pants re­port­ed over 20 per cent mi­gra­tion.

The sur­vey aimed to gain in­sights in­to the ap­proach com­pa­nies are tak­ing post-pan­dem­ic specif­i­cal­ly, whether they are re­vert­ing to pre-pan­dem­ic strate­gies or ex­plor­ing new and in­no­v­a­tive ones to adapt and piv­ot.

“Con­trol­ling tal­ent costs has long been a pri­or­i­ty for ex­ec­u­tives world­wide, but now they are in­creas­ing­ly fo­cused on ways to re­tain top tal­ent and ac­quire the nec­es­sary skills for the fu­ture.

“The re­cent chal­lenges of los­ing skilled em­ploy­ees and hav­ing to re­cruit at high costs and with re­duced pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, are still fresh in the minds of busi­ness­es,” the sur­vey re­vealed.

Brain drain al­so con­tin­ues to have mul­ti­ple ef­fects on the coun­try’s econ­o­my as Ar­joon fur­ther ex­plained it low­ers the po­ten­tial for in­creased en­tre­pre­neur­ial ac­tiv­i­ties and there­fore, de­creas­es the abil­i­ty of the pri­vate sec­tor to in­no­vate and be­come more com­pet­i­tive.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, some en­ti­ties may even cease to ex­ist in the fu­ture with many busi­ness own­ers send­ing their chil­dren abroad for ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion who opt not to re­turn hence, there’s no one to takeover or ex­pand the busi­ness.

Fur­ther, brain drain al­so re­duces the qual­i­ty of State in­sti­tu­tions as there are few­er skilled peo­ple avail­able to run them, cre­at­ing more room for “mis­man­age­ment, cor­rup­tion and added bu­reau­cra­cy,” Ar­joon added.

The Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce al­so told the Busi­ness Guardian that the bright­est of­ten leave for green­er pas­tures due to the coun­try’s de­te­ri­o­rat­ing so­cio-eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment, high crime rate, lack of avail­abil­i­ty of jobs, un­der­em­ploy­ment and the ris­ing cost of liv­ing.

“Crime and a re­duc­tion in em­ploy­ment in the bor­ough are the two lead­ing caus­es for brain drain. Ch­agua­nas cur­rent­ly ranks sec­ond for the high­est crime rate in the coun­try,” the cham­ber said.

The labour sec­tor is al­so neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed in oth­er ways.

“When more skilled labour em­i­grate, it means the pro­por­tion of low-skilled labour in the over­all labour force grows. This cre­ates even more in­come in­equal­i­ty and can deep­en the in­for­mal sec­tor, as many low-skilled per­sons al­ready work there,” Ar­joon said.

On the oth­er hand he not­ed, skilled work­ers who em­i­grat­ed in­crease re­mit­tances to T&T when they send monies to their fam­i­lies.

Ac­cord­ing to da­ta from the World Bank T&T re­ceived over US$1.3 bil­lion in re­mit­tances from 2015 to 2022.

Oth­ers al­so cre­ate For­eign Di­rect In­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for the coun­try af­ter be­com­ing suc­cess­ful abroad and by set­ting-up small busi­ness­es or in­vest­ing in ex­ist­ing ones lo­cal­ly, while con­tin­u­ing to live abroad.

T&T is al­so ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a “par­tial brain drain” from a non-tra­di­tion­al sce­nario.

That’s where some skilled peo­ple-still re­sid­ing lo­cal­ly- are work­ing re­mote­ly for a for­eign en­ti­ty.

While they make some con­tri­bu­tion to the econ­o­my by lo­cal spend­ing, their pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and knowl­edge, how­ev­er, are used to de­vel­op an­oth­er coun­try, Ar­joon said.

While all these el­e­ments con­tin­ue to be con­cern­ing the in­flux of mi­grants can plug those gaps.

“We can ac­tu­al­ly have a ‘brain gain’ via Venezue­lan mi­grants which we are not util­is­ing to off­set some of the lost pro­duc­tiv­i­ty from the brain drain,” Ar­joon said, not­ing that many of these mi­grants are high­ly-skilled in var­i­ous spheres in­clud­ing as doc­tors, en­gi­neers and teach­ers.

How­ev­er, Ar­joon said their cre­den­tials are not recog­nised lo­cal­ly and hence, are not con­sid­ered for skilled em­ploy­ment.

This, he ad­vised, needs to be ur­gent­ly cor­rect­ed, as these mi­grants work in low-skilled po­si­tions, rather than giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­tribute to boost the coun­try’s pro­duc­tive ca­pac­i­ty.

Mul­ti­fac­eted prob­lem -HRMATT

Pres­i­dent of the Hu­man Re­source Man­age­ment As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (HRMATT) Cavelle Joseph-St Omer who shared sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments agreed that brain drain is one of the ma­jor is­sues plagu­ing coun­tries, es­pe­cial­ly de­vel­op­ing ones like T&T.

She said al­though as a coun­try it rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant com­po­nent of to­tal in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man mi­gra­tion, there are “or­gan­i­sa­tion­al lev­el fac­tors” as an­tecedents of brain drain which re­main most­ly un­ex­plored, which may in­flu­ence some­one’s de­ci­sion to mi­grate.

“The work­force of to­day is look­ing for bet­ter work­ing con­di­tions. They want a bet­ter boss. They want to con­tin­ue work­ing re­mote­ly. Or they want to re­turn to an of­fice.

“They want more sched­ule flex­i­bil­i­ty, clear­er bound­aries, and bet­ter work/life bal­ance. They’re seek­ing bet­ter pay or ben­e­fits, per­haps more va­ca­tion, time off for el­der­ly care, child care so­lu­tions and more sup­port for pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment,” Joseph-St Omer ex­plained.

How­ev­er, some of the brain drain is in­evitable.

Ac­cord­ing to the HRMATT head, there’s the “grey tsuna­mi” ex­pe­ri­enced by many com­pa­nies as boomers re­tire.

Em­ploy­ees, there­fore, with deep in­sti­tu­tion­al knowl­edge are lost, or will be soon.

Joseph-St Omer said HRMATT is con­cerned as re­plac­ing em­ploy­ees in this cur­rent job mar­ket is chal­leng­ing and ex­pen­sive.

“Re­cruit­ing and train­ing eat up re­sources,” she ex­plained adding, “Com­pound that with a loss of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, the toll it takes on cus­tomer ser­vice, and the men­tal costs for em­ploy­ees who have to take on ex­tra work,” she said.

Like Ar­joon, Joseph-St Omer em­pha­sised T&T must tack­le this prob­lem.

She rec­om­mend­ed con­duct­ing in­dus­try-spe­cif­ic or coun­try-wide em­ploy­ee sur­veys to gath­er bench­mark­ing da­ta to stay com­pet­i­tive in the mar­ket­place.

How­ev­er, Joseph-St Omer not­ed that the Min­istry of Labour is ac­tu­al­ly prepar­ing to launch a sur­vey on va­can­cies which can as­sist with one piece of the puz­zle.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, she sug­gest­ed em­ploy­ers can al­so con­duct re­ten­tion sur­veys.

HM­RATT is al­so ex­am­in­ing the prob­lem be­yond the work­place.

“We recog­nise brain drain is dam­ag­ing to eco­nom­ic growth as well. This is be­cause each skilled work­er rep­re­sents sur­plus spend­ing units. Their loss can re­duce con­sumer spend­ing in our coun­try, which in turn af­fects busi­ness­es.

“Eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment is crit­i­cal for us to thrive. It at­tracts busi­ness­es, has ben­e­fits for com­pa­nies al­ready there, and over time, can sup­port their growth. The im­pact of brain drain is re­al­ly prob­lem­at­ic for eco­nom­ic growth in the long term,” Joseph-St Omer ex­plained.

While she not­ed there is not an easy fix there are some things that busi­ness­es and Gov­ern­ment can do to re­duce or min­imise it.

These in­clude in­creas­ing in­vest­ments in­to cer­tain ar­eas of the econ­o­my while seek­ing to cre­ate a fa­cil­i­ta­tive busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my and en­cour­age en­tre­pre­neur­ship; of­fer­ing com­pet­i­tive terms and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment, es­pe­cial­ly since ad­just­ments to the same have been out­stand­ing for con­sid­er­able years; paving the way for le­gal and so­cial re­form that can im­prove the labour mar­ket and ush­er in a mod­ern work­place; im­prov­ing the qual­i­ty of re­sources, such as hous­ing and health care; pro­vid­ing af­ford­able hous­ing so­lu­tions and re­vis­ing the fi­nan­cial sys­tem to ac­cept con­tract em­ploy­ment.

“We should re­mem­ber that brain drain oc­curs when there is a lack of op­por­tu­ni­ty. For in­stance, some pro­fes­sion­als leave in search of bet­ter op­por­tu­ni­ties in parts of the de­vel­oped world, “Joseph-St Omer main­tained.

Mak­ing eco­nom­ic in­vest­ments to boost growth, she added, of­ten pro­vides in­cen­tives for peo­ple to stay, as it means ac­cess to bet­ter and more re­sources, per­son­al eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty, and the po­ten­tial for a high­er stan­dard of liv­ing.