00:00What is your policy on employment or facilitating employment of trainees?
00:06Because it gets very frustrating for young people.
00:09Some of them are in one training program after another.
00:12They complete OJT, they know they can't go back there, they go on another program.
00:16But what they really want is employment.
00:18The question about the OJT or on-the-job training program from local government minister Khadija Amin
00:24to representatives of the Ministry of Labor, Small and Microenterprise Development
00:29during a public hearing of a parliamentary committee's inquiry into youth unemployment
00:33and underemployment in Trinidad and Tobago.
00:36Labor Ministry Permanent Secretary Natalie Willis responded.
00:42At this time, the ministry does not have a national employment policy.
00:52We recognize that there is need for such a policy,
00:57which of course a youth employment policy would be a component of the larger employment policy.
01:05We have started having discussions with the international labor organization
01:12with regard to the development of such a policy.
01:16The Labor Ministry's Acting Chief Manpower Officer Monique Abraham
01:19provided further details to Minister Amin,
01:22who is the Vice Chairman of the Joint Select Committee on Social Services and Public Administration.
01:27The National Employment Service is the government's free and public service
01:32where persons can register, job seekers can register for employment,
01:36and employers can also post their vacancies, as our peers have said.
01:41When persons come in, they are interviewed by manpower officers,
01:45and we would collect their documents, compare originals with copies and so on,
01:52and match persons with vacancies that we have.
01:55Minister Amin saw details about what is being done to assist the trainees under the Labor Ministry.
02:01In terms of the trainees under the ministry, our specific ministry,
02:07in most instances, they continue into employment under the ministry,
02:12because we recognize whether it's through the OJT program,
02:18whether they come through some other avenue into the ministry,
02:24and we, through whatever training, mentorship that is given to them,
02:28over the period of time we recognize we need to keep them.
02:32So, they tend to transition, right now, either to short-term or fixed-term members.
02:37Right, but that's a very small number.
02:39Because, speaking to our ministry, I cannot say what other ministries do.
02:46The ministry's labor market specialist, Dr. Justin Joseph,
02:50spoke about the planned establishment of the labor market information system.
02:55One of the main issues that we are looking at
02:58is the alignment between the demand for labor and the supply for labor.
03:05Once this system is operationalized, as I indicated,
03:11a number of labor market issues can be resolved
03:16through having data to make those decisions.
03:20Committee Member and Sports Ministry, Parliamentary Secretary David Naked,
03:24expressed his hope that the proposed new system
03:27would determine the success level of matching OJTs to the jobs that are available
03:33and reveal how many of them are left out of the system.
03:37Jewel Brown, TV6 News.
