YTEPP Lim­it­ed and the On-the-Job Train­ing (OJT) Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Labour are seek­ing to form a part­ner­ship.

The an­nounce­ment was made by Mont­gomery Guy, di­rec­tor of the En­tre­pre­neur­ial De­vel­op­ment and Sup­port Ser­vices De­part­ment at YTEPP Lim­it­ed, fol­low­ing a meet­ing with both par­ties on Fri­day at YTEPP’s Ch­agua­nas head of­fice.

Guy said a strate­gic part­ner­ship was dis­cussed that would fa­cil­i­tate YTEPP grad­u­ates re­ceiv­ing a seam­less en­try in­to the work­force.

“This ini­tia­tive seeks to cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for in­di­vid­u­als trained in Tech­ni­cal and Vo­ca­tion­al Ed­u­ca­tion and Train­ing (TVET) to gain prac­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ence and con­tribute mean­ing­ful­ly to the na­tion­al econ­o­my.

“The dis­cus­sions fo­cused on lever­ag­ing YTEPP’s ex­ten­sive train­ing pro­grammes and the OJT Di­vi­sion’s struc­tured job place­ment frame­work to en­hance em­ploy­a­bil­i­ty for grad­u­ates in fields such as culi­nary arts, per­son­al ser­vices, cre­ative ser­vices, and oth­er tech­ni­cal dis­ci­plines,” said Guy.

He em­pha­sised the po­ten­tial im­pact of this col­lab­o­ra­tion.

“At YTEPP, we are com­mit­ted to equip­ping our trainees with the skills nec­es­sary to thrive in to­day’s job mar­ket. How­ev­er, tech­ni­cal pro­fi­cien­cy alone is not enough; hands-on ex­pe­ri­ence is crit­i­cal. By part­ner­ing with the OJT Di­vi­sion, we can bridge the gap be­tween train­ing and em­ploy­ment, en­sur­ing that our grad­u­ates are work-ready and can con­tribute ef­fec­tive­ly to their re­spec­tive in­dus­tries.”

Joann David, Di­rec­tor of the On-the-Job Train­ing Di­vi­sion, said it is ded­i­cat­ed to prepar­ing young pro­fes­sion­als for sus­tain­able ca­reers by pro­vid­ing re­al-world work ex­po­sure.

She said a col­lab­o­ra­tion with YTEPP would al­low the OJT Di­vi­sion to fur­ther strength­en its man­date by in­te­grat­ing a pipeline of high­ly skilled, tech­ni­cal­ly trained in­di­vid­u­als in­to the labour mar­ket.

“This ini­tia­tive would not on­ly sup­port eco­nom­ic growth but al­so fos­ter pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment and job cre­ation.”

Guy said both or­gan­i­sa­tions have com­mit­ted to ex­plor­ing the frame­work for a for­mal part­ner­ship, which would in­clude struc­tured trainee place­ments, men­tor­ship op­por­tu­ni­ties, and em­ploy­er en­gage­ment strate­gies to en­sure long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

He said the ini­tial meet­ing marked a promis­ing step to­wards en­hanc­ing work­force readi­ness in T&T.