EDITORIAL - Accelerate training agenda

Davon Crump's inability to find workers who speak languages other than English for his Montego Bay-based call-centre operation is in line with a broader trend which sees Jamaica's labour market demanding action from policymakers.

The matter is even more urgent given the Government's initiative to transform Jamaica into a global logistics centre to take advantage of the expansion of the Panama Canal to accommodate the new generation of mega ships. A potential constraint to this project, already being harped on by the naysayers and neo-Luddites, is the likely shortage of people with the skills, and in the appropriate numbers, to fill available jobs.

Indeed, unemployment officially at 15 per cent - a far greater number is marginally employed - the labour ministry consistently reports an inability of employers to fill vacancies. That is partly the result of a mismatch between jobs and skills. It is estimated that seven of 10 employees have neither training nor certification for the jobs they do.

A full fix to this problem is, of course, neither simple nor immediate, for it is not merely, in too many respects, taking already- educated workers through retraining exercises. For the effort, more fundamentally, requires the overhaul of an education system from which about a third of the children complete/ drop out of school at grade nine, and a fifth of those who are left are screened out of secondary-school exams.

Of those who write the Caribbean Examinations Council's (CXC) secondary-school tests, fewer than 20 per cent pass five subjects, including math and English, in a single sitting. Only a handful of the students, too, muster passing grades in Spanish or other foreign languages.

These weaknesses do not suggest to us that Jamaica ought not to press ahead with the new economic initiatives. They are challenges to be worked around while we push ahead with the longer-term education fix, as well as reorient our vocational and other training systems to accommodate the changing job market.

In the case of the logistics enterprise, Jamaica is not, at this point, terribly at a loss. Already the home of the Caribbean's largest trans-shipment port, we have in place many of the skills with which to kick-start an expanded logistics venture. We have, too, a surfeit of accountants and lawyers, whose skills might be important to this enterprise.

From this base, it can't be too difficult for an institution like the University of Technology, accelerating a return to its core, and working with, say, the Caribbean Maritime Institute, to fast-track training in various logistics-related skills.

Training in languages ought not to be seen as separate and distinct from this project and being specific to businesses of the type operated by Mr Crump and the tourism sector. Being able to communicate with clients in various languages is an elemental part of a logistics venture.

A 2011 tracer study by the University of the West Indies, Mona, showed that 75 per cent of its Spanish graduates were in jobs with a median income of $120,000 per month. The employment rate, however, represented a decline from the full employment reported by its 2007 graduates when they were traced 18 months later. Whatever is now the case, it is clear that we need to have people studying languages - and many other things besides.

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