Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Allyson West is mak­ing it clear that there is no short­age of jobs avail­able with­in the pub­lic sec­tor.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that a lot of young peo­ple are fac­ing dif­fi­cul­ties in find­ing em­ploy­ment, West said yes­ter­day that there are over 13,000 per­ma­nent job va­can­cies in the pub­lic sec­tor. And with dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion on­go­ing across min­istries, she said peo­ple with a dig­i­tal skillset are in high de­mand.

“I keep hear­ing from all sorts of places that there’s tons of peo­ple who have com­plet­ed their ed­u­ca­tion and there are no jobs and when I look around the pub­lic ser­vice, that is far from the truth...,” West said dur­ing a ca­reer fair host­ed by the min­istry at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day

“(The) Pub­lic ser­vice is an or­gan­i­sa­tion in tran­si­tion, so this is re­al­ly a per­fect time for them to come in be­cause they can get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to shape the change they want to see. I reached out to the Ser­vice Com­mis­sion’s de­part­ment (SCD) about two weeks ago and of the 55,000 per­ma­nent jobs in the pub­lic ser­vice, al­most 25 per cent of that is va­cant. There are va­can­cies to be filled.”

She added, “We have va­can­cies in a wide range of ar­eas. Every min­istry is en­gaged in the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion process, so peo­ple with those skills are in de­mand. ICT staff, com­mu­ni­ca­tions spe­cial­ists, HR spe­cial­ists to name a few. I’m not aware of any min­istry that does not have sig­nif­i­cant va­can­cies in its or­gan­i­sa­tion.”

Asked about pub­lic ser­vice work­ers on con­tract who com­plain about not get­ting the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be hired per­ma­nent­ly, de­spite work­ing on con­tract for years, West said the pub­lic ser­vice will al­ways have a need for con­tract work­ers, even if more per­ma­nent po­si­tions are of­fered.

She said, “There’s a be­lief in the pub­lic ser­vice that every­body should be en­gaged in a per­ma­nent po­si­tion. Now while we have set up per­ma­nent po­si­tions and the sys­tem to pro­tect those jobs from po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence es­sen­tial­ly, I don’t think the pub­lic ser­vice will ever be in a po­si­tion to be ful­ly staffed by per­ma­nent po­si­tions be­cause you have changes fre­quent­ly and you have a change in the kinds of staff that you need to do things.

“For ex­am­ple, we’re about dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion now. The digi­ti­sa­tion trust that we’re on now will not con­tin­ue at this pace for­ev­er, so it does not make sense hir­ing a slew of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion per­sons in per­ma­nent po­si­tions be­cause af­ter we get to a cer­tain plateau in this ac­tiv­i­ty, it will ta­per off and we will no longer con­tin­ue to need those peo­ple.

“We will al­ways have is­sues like that where the type of staff and the skills that you need will vary on oc­ca­sion in cer­tain cir­cum­stances, de­pend­ing on the ac­tiv­i­ty that you’re en­gaged in. Es­sen­tial­ly, the pub­lic ser­vice will con­tin­ue to be, I as­sume, an en­ti­ty that is made up of a mix of two es­sen­tial cat­e­gories of em­ploy­ees. The per­ma­nent on the one hand and con­tract on the oth­er.”

She said the min­istry is cur­rent­ly en­gaged in a job eval­u­a­tion ex­er­cise to as­sess the skills with­in the sys­tem and the skills need­ed.

“Once that job eval­u­a­tion ex­er­cise is done, it is ex­pect­ed that we will be able to treat with some of the peo­ple who have been on con­tract for years be­cause we will be in a clear­er po­si­tion as to what we need in re­spect of those ac­tiv­i­ties and there­fore some of those will be re­placed by per­ma­nent po­si­tions it is ex­pect­ed. But as I said, there will al­ways be a need for con­tract po­si­tions be­cause there will al­ways be some ac­tiv­i­ty an­tic­i­pat­ed to last on­ly for a cer­tain pe­ri­od of time and not be need­ed in the def­i­nite fu­ture.” A vis­it to the Ser­vice Com­mis­sion De­part­ment’s web­site yes­ter­day re­vealed on­ly four va­can­cies avail­able. These in­clud­ed two va­can­cies in the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry’s Cadet Force Di­vi­sion, one va­can­cy in the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment and one va­can­cy in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter.

Mean­while, on the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion’s web­site, the most re­cent va­can­cies were nine con­trac­tu­al po­si­tions which all closed off in Sep­tem­ber. These in­clud­ed po­si­tions such as se­nior com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer, web de­sign­er, hos­pi­tal­i­ty at­ten­dant and pho­tog­ra­ph­er.

Guardian Me­dia al­so ob­served 17 va­can­cies for po­si­tions at the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and one va­can­cy at the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion. These in­clude busi­ness op­er­a­tions as­sis­tant, en­gi­neer and sur­vey of­fi­cer, fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer, ICT man­ag­er and pub­lic health of­fi­cer.

These po­si­tions were ad­ver­tised on Em­ployTT’s web­site, which ad­ver­tis­es pub­lic ser­vice jobs.

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Leroy Bap­tiste but up to press time he was not avail­able for com­ment.

MPA ca­reer fair

West told Guardian Me­dia the dis­con­nect be­tween young peo­ple seek­ing jobs and ac­tu­al­ly at­tain­ing jobs in the pub­lic sec­tor, was what prompt­ed the min­istry to host the ca­reer fair at NA­PA.

The fair catered to pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary stu­dents and young peo­ple seek­ing jobs.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the ca­reer fair, sev­er­al min­istries and state-owned agen­cies, in­clud­ing the Min­istry of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion, Min­istry of Labour, the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) Bmo­bile and Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NGC), were on site.

West said she ex­pect­ed 5,000 young peo­ple to ben­e­fit from the fair.

She said the min­istry al­so host­ed ca­reer fairs at the South­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (SAPA) and in To­ba­go in re­cent weeks.