THE EDITOR, Sir:
ON JANUARY 24, 2003 I was listening to Barbara Gloudon, RJR Hotline Talk Show host, speaking with a representative of the Small Business Association about the growing unemployment depression in Jamaica and I must say congratulations to the Hotline Team for being so insightful. It is evident that activities that were once categorised as hustling can now be redefined as employment and the man or woman who was 'helping out' can now be called employees.
Terms and types of employment are changing and while some people may think it is for the worse, as they may have been denied the opportunity of becoming the banker or lawyer they were aspiring to, it is an evolution leading to what they can become.
After listening to the interview, I called up a school and spoke with the Guidance Counsellor on the plans for the traditional Career Week. I learnt that their guest speakers have never included taxi drivers, JUTC bus drivers, or even the vendors at their school gate. Some of these vendors are parents of children at the same school, and who have been vending there from the children started at age seven to the teenage stage.
I am imploring the schools to include these individuals on their list of elites to come and speak with the students as to possible career path. Why? I encourage this because a taxi driver is an employee or employer and who when he leaves his home at 6:00 in the morning and returns at 6:00 in the evening he is coming from work. The vendor who reaches the gate before 7 a.m. each weekday and leaves by 4:00 p.m. spent her day at work; an entrepreneur in her own right and I believe that their contribution to Career Week is important.
These entrepreneurs are their own marketing and financial managers, albeit without professional training, and if their children who they have schooled and who in the process have learnt the proper techniques of marketing, apply some of what they have learnt to their parents' business, then their business could soar to new heights.
I am etc.,
JANICE GREEN
webb@cwjamaica.com
Spanish Town
St. Catherine
Via Go-Jamaica
