A study is needed to track the benefits of government supported youth programmes.
This according to Vice President of the Employers’ Consultative Association during the Joint Select Committee on Social Services and Public Administration on Wednesday.
Vice President of the Employers’ Consultative Association, Neil Derrick, is calling for a comprehensive study to assess the impact of youth programmes, including the On-the-Job Training Programme.
Speaking during a Joint Select Committee on Social Services and Public Administration on Wednesday, he said while there is support for evaluating existing programmes, there is a need to better understand the skills being developed.
“We are not in a position I think where we would happily launch such a tracer study but we do welcome it because we will like to know how much people have different skill sets coming from other organisations, especially when you have things like expatriate companies coming, when there are challenges, many say that there are no qualified persons in Trinidad.”
The JSC focused on youth unemployment and underemployment in Trinidad and Tobago.
Mr. Derrick also highlighted structural challenges within the labour market, noting that smaller businesses often lack the resources to hire and train young employees.
“37% of our members say that 50% of their workforce is within 18 to 35. So yes, there is a high recruitment of young persons. But we have to look at that from a structure point because in terms of our membership, our membership are some for the larger organizations. Don’t depend on that. A large part is the informal workforce which is really where you have small companies, MSMEs.”
Meanwhile, a senior Human Resource Executive, Joelann Cook Walcott, pointed to behavioural challenges impacting employability.
“Punctuality and attendance, those are big issues at a national level that I think that we all have to address, but also we have neuro-diversity issues that are coming into the workplace that we find our members and employers seriously grappling with.”
And Policy Director at the Tobago House of Assembly, Ann Marie de Gazon, said young people are also experiencing difficulties even after securing jobs.
“The issues that have been raised to us as well in relation to the minimum wage. While the increase in the wage seems to be a good thing for our young persons what we have seen or comments by our young persons have shown that employers are balancing that off by sometimes reducing the number of hours that they work in the week. So we are finding young persons who are not able to be employed through an entire work week.”
Additionally, the First Citizens Group reported that a significant number of working-age youth fall into the NEET category – not in education, employment, or training.