REGIONAL Ministries of Labour will be playing an active role in the promotion of vocational education with Barbados Labour Minister Dr. Esther Byer-Suckoo exhorting that it is “an important area for the development of our labour force both nationally and regionally.” This assurance was given at a press conference last Friday, following the close of the 19th Meeting of the Council for Human and Social Development (COHSOD) in collaboration with the Seventh International Labour Organisation (ILO) Meeting of the Caribbean Labour Ministers.
The successful three-day meeting was held under the theme “Policy Coherence for Human and Social Development in the Caribbean Community: The Contribution of Labour Ministries and the Decent Work Agenda.”
Dr.  Byer-Suckoo, in response to questions posed by the media, said the group spent a lot of time deliberating the issue relating to youth.
She said the report from the CARICOM Youth Commission that was held in Suriname last January was looked at and one of the things recognised was that “our young people want work more than anything else”.
“They are concerned about some of the social issues. They are concerned about their safety, about crime and violence and things like that, but at the core of it a lot of our young people feel that the education system has failed them,” she stressed.
“They feel that it really doesn’t make sense because they are not going to be able to work; they are not going to be able to achieve for themselves and self actualization for them, are actually something that many of them don’t even ever hope to realize, and so we agreed at the COHSOD that this was an urgent matter,” she stated.
She said they are not going to “be patient and deliberate and deliberate any further but that this was a matter that had to accelerate.”
To this end, the Barbados Labour Minister disclosed that it was agreed among other things to accelerating the vocational training for the region’s young people.
She observed that a lot of young people are coming out of school with hardly any CXCs (Caribbean Examinations Council), and the rate of acquisition of basic qualifications such as Mathematics and English have declined across the region.
“So for our young people vocational training is the way to go, and we have agreed here at this meeting that we have to put some emphasis on that, and there is also a need to de-stigmatize vocational training,” she stated.
Byer-Suckoo noted that across the region vocational training is seen as being something that is only for persons who are not succeeding academically.
She maintained that the stigma has to be removed so that from very early students can choose a vocation and start to achieve their qualifications.
In this regard, she stated that promotion at the national level as well as the regional level has to be carried out to ensure that young people understand the CVQs (Caribbean Vocational Qualifications) and what it means for movement across the region and for the development of the region.
She assured that they are committed to this, and as Ministers of Labour have agreed that they are going to play a very active role in those discussions, noting that in many countries, the TVET (Technical and Vocational Education and Training) council or such, may not reside within the ministries of labour.
“…this is an important area for the development of our labour force both nationally and regionally, and so the Ministries of Labour will be taking an active role in the promotion of vocational training,’ she reiterated.
Chair of the COHSOD and Grenada Labour Minister, Karl Hood, touching on youth and unemployment in the region, said there was a very comprehensive report on youth that was brought before the council outlining some of the problems that youth face in terms of the understanding of the benefits that are there in work, and the fact that some youths “are even not willing to dream anymore.”
He noted that, 85 per cent of youth indicated that given a chance they would migrate to a developed country because “they do not see the possibility of their dream being fulfilled in these countries”.
He said the participants looked at the CVQs and the TVET and the benefits that accrues through social security benefits and the free movement, and “how to help these young people to understand that there is possibilities here in our jurisdictions.”
He said the council agreed that there is a problem as it relates to unemployment, but noted that it was conceded that with the coming on stream of that free movement within the CARICOM, young people who attained a certain level of education and have TVET or CVQs would be able to find jobs much easier in different parts of the region, and still maintain their benefits.
“We think that this is going to help in the overall frame of mind of young persons as it relates to their field of work,” Hood insisted.
CARICOM Assistant Secretary-General, Human and Social Development, Dr. Edward Greene, indicated that much of the problems relating to unemployment of youths have to do with the persistence of a low economic growth in the region, but at the same time emerging from the meeting are some very positive trends at the level of policy that could help to alleviate the problem.
“And perhaps one of those is the continuous tripartite dialogue between labour, the private sector and government, and I think that we can’t underestimate this kind of approach, and Barbados in particular, over the years, has really demonstrated the viability and the importance of such,” he underscored.
Director of the ILO Sub-regional Office for the Caribbean, Dr. Ana Teresa Romero said one of the issues that also arose in the discussion of empowering youth and training them for the world of work was also to focus on entrepreneurial education.
“For instance, one may acquire training in a technical or vocational area and your aspiration may be to be self-employed as opposed to working for someone, and so the importance of combining technical and vocational training with the opportunity for entrepreneurial education is also something that came up in the discussion,” she pinpointed.
She said that she thinks that this would help to contribute to removing some of the stigma that is associated.
“Because not everybody is inclined to get into a business but if you can combine your technical and vocational skills with the capacity to set up a business then you are really on the road not just to creating employment for yourself, but you may in the long term with the proper support from both government and the private sector, be able to become an employer of persons,” she insisted.