PM concerned about labour shortage in construction
Published:Wednesday | April 20, 2022 | 3:18 PM
With seven major developments on the horizon along the north coast and a labour shortage affecting the island, Jamaica could be forced to import skilled workers for the construction industry.
Addressing stakeholders this morning at a ground breaking for the 700-room RIU Aquarelle in Cooper's Pen in Trelawny, Prime Minister Andrew Holness expressed concerns regarding the situation, which he said could become a really bad one if not solved soon.
His remarks echoed a similar concern raised in recent times by tourism minister Edmund Bartlett.
Noting that the country is not yet at full employment, Holness said that island was particularly challenged in the area of construction.
He was also quick to qualify that the problem was not a shortage of people.
“What we are short of is labour. To be counted as part of the labour force, there are some standards that you have to meet, you have to be 16 years and older and you have to be actively seeking work over a certain period of time,” he explained.
He underscored the fact that many Jamaicans are not in the labour force as they are not seeking or have no interest in joining the labour force.
But, he noted that these could be brought into the labour force, making reference to an unpopular suggestion he made three weeks ago regarding the consideration being made to establish a kind of mandatory national service or training for the country's youths.
When the term mandatory is used, he said, some people in the society get nervous, but there was no need to.
“What we are talking about is far from that. What we are talking about is very far from that. The challenge we face in Jamaica is that we have significant leakage from our education system. So people will go to school, they will register in a school, but oftentimes don't get skills, dropout and end up in a subculture in an underground society.”
He said these were the same people who are captured by gangs, and who end up in a life of crime and what the country sees is the effects of their activities.
In particular, he argued, these are young men who are victims of crime, and who are themselves the predominant perpetrators of crime.
“We would have loved to have them working on our [construction] sites, working in call centres, our logistics operations, working in hospitals, working in schools, but we just don't have them. So we do have underutilised capacity in our population. Which we need to bring in a structured and organised way into our labour force in a coordinated way.”
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