IF ANYTHING, I’ve learned after about four years of doing this, even if at times irregularly, that when it comes to planning columns, even the best laid of plans of mice and men and weekly columnists can go askew, and leave you nothing but a modified blueprint.
Before returning to my own modified blueprint for this third installment in my series on human resources, I’d like to express my condolences to Dr. Ramsundar Doobay and his family at this obviously tragic time. Last week, I explored general ways in which we could prepare our labour force for not only the type of jobs that our economy currently demands, but those we can reasonably expect to be available sometime in the future.
I believe that one of the key challenges facing the local labour market is that of retooling and retraining. I can’t offhand think of any skilled job which does not require a perpetual upgrading of the qualifications necessary to perform it. To the extent that we do not constantly reequip ourselves to function within a global environment where whatever it is that you are engaged in, someone is looking to do it better and more efficiently, that is the extent to which we fail to progress.
In last week’s article, I proposed a tracking mechanism which would capture the intended career of students now entering secondary school, updating and refining that intention throughout their secondary career and into their tertiary education.
During the last week, I spent a great deal of time pondering how such a system would transition into a mechanism that would be relevant to the labour force. At present, I don’t imagine that the University of Guyana could comfortably handle the creation of a skills enhancement programme. What I came up with is that there needs to be a separate entity which is integrated into the sort of environment I proposed in the first two articles, one in which there is a holistic, multiagency approach to labour development and planning.
Let me give a hypothetical example, one qualified by the disclaimer that I am not now nor have I even been a professional educator. Little Johnny, in his interview just before entering secondary school, says he likes to draw. The system I envision would place him in a broad category concerned with the visual arts; as he goes through secondary school, he retains his commitment to drawing, enhancing it with painting, in addition to using the computer to produce some of his artwork – the system further refines his categorization according to his increasing propensity for drawing intricate designs on the computer. At this point, he receives the guidance and exposure necessary, so that by the time he is ready for university, he knows that he wants to do computer-aided design, perhaps with a minor in architecture. If he’s still here by the time he’s finished with his Master’s, not only will his skills have been monitored and guided by the system, but – particularly if he works within the public service – there are options available to him whenever he is ready to upgrade his skills.
For me, the one key advantage of this system, as I imagine it, is that progress within it does not have to be strictly linear, with a traditional tertiary education necessarily being a prerequisite or even ideal. Recently in the US, a vibrant debate has been going in regarding the relevance and cost-benefit efficacy of a college education. The argument goes that – while a degree may be necessary for some careers – the prevailing wisdom that it is generally better to have one is mistaken when you consider some practical examples, jobs which require practical skills for example, more than academic ones, and for which the enormous debt burden carried by the average college student would be absolutely without payoff in the long-term. Under the system I envisage, if Johnny were to choose an early career in house draughtsmanship – a practical choice considering the boom in home ownership and building across Guyana – instead of studying architecture outright, he would still be able to access the mechanism necessary to enhance his level of skills.
Finally, one thing that I believe people rarely consider in developing human resources models is whether we have the absorptive capacity – in terms of skills – to competently handle the sort of sterling economic growth we have been enjoying across the board. I frankly don’t think that, in the long-term, we do, even taking into account the Low-Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) which proposes to place large swathes of our landscape under the remunerated ‘stewardship’ of the developed world, our population density is still going to be relatively low with regard to our economically exploitable land space and by extension resources. In short, we may have to take a serious look at the issue of migrant labour.
Now I understand that I seem to be treading on thin ice with regard to the issue of current unemployment: “Why,” the detractor would reasonably be expected to ask, “worry about creating a job market for immigrant workers when we have people right here looking for employment?”
While the query is understandable, within today’s environment, the logic behind it is arguably faulty. For one, the nature of some projects dictates that those employed in key aspects of them are necessarily migrant workers. Consider, for example, a not so recent investment in a culturally-themed restaurant – a large number of their culinary staff were necessarily imported. 
And the whole issue of migrant labour is already a reality, from the culinary workers cited above, to the mining industry personnel, to workers in the health sector. All I’m suggesting is that we take a more proactive approach to management of the phenomenon.
Preparing a plan for a migrant labour force isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Indeed, it’s usually an indicator of economic growth, the contingency for which I’ve suggested the issue be explored in the first place. Consider that one of the richest economies in the world per capita, Saudi Arabia, has a labour force that is made up of around 50 per cent migrant workers. And Canada, one of the fastest growing economies in the world, openly admits that it needs 300,000 immigrants every year to keep its economy rolling.
In some ways, even the strategy that I’ve been articulating in itself could militate against the need for migrant workers in the medium-term, by efficiently channelling local skills – however, in the long-term, migrant labour is a possibility we have to make contingency plans for.
A migrant worker programme in itself enables job creation for locals. As examples the world over has shown, for example, local the engineers and architects in host countries country would not be able to use their talents without migrant workers buttressing the construction industry.
And, of course, a corollary or related consideration within the migrant worker issue is that of the remigrant worker. As I’ve advocated in this column before, an active database of skills available within the Guyanese Diaspora would effectively aid any human resource development policy which has a key element the repatriation of skills.
While the argument can be made that the reason that these skills would have left in the first place is that there was no place for them within the local economy, I believe that there can be creative ways of attracting them back, beyond the concessions granted to remigrants already.
For example, whereas development aid has usually meant bringing expats in for temporary engagements, from a human resource development perspective, I see no reason that we cannot tie technical and even financial aid to a policy of enriching our pool of available human resources in a more sustainable manner. I have no doubt that this may be happening now in an incidental and ad hoc manner, but I am looking at this from a position of creating critical volume, the sort of numbers that would be truly transformative to the local economy.
Next week, I am going to explore this issue even further, although, learning from experience, I am not going to commit to any pre-established area of enquiry – you never know in what direction either the research, or more time spent thinking about this, is going to take me. (burrowesk@yahoo.com)
CONGRATULATIONS ARE IN ORDER, MINISTER MANICKCHAND!