By Roy Sanford, Staff ReporterWESTERN BUREAU:
NEW MEASURES have been put in place by the Ministry of Labour and Social Security to streamline its recruitment drive for persons applying to join the Jamaica-U.S.A. Overseas Employment Programme.
These include a more thorough application and interview process, increased penalties when breaches of contract occur, and a public education drive to increase the awareness of the beneficial effects of the programme.
"The Ministry...will be taking every step to ensure that, from our side, the recruitment is scrupulously done," said Horace Dalley, Minister of Labour and Social Security.
"We are aware of the need to safeguard against illegal recruitment and those who use the programme as an opportunity to abscond once they arrive in the United States."
He was addressing a meeting of the Regional Labour Board and employers from the United States at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Rose Hall, St. James yesterday.
According to Mr. Dalley, the confiscation of funds is one of the penalties imposed on workers who fail to fulfil their contracts. "Their savings in Jamaica will be confiscated and given to the Government of Jamaica," he warned.
INTERVIEW PROCESS
He said the application and interview process would be more stringent to ensure that only the proper and competent persons are selected for the programme. "We have people who applied to go to work on farms and upon arrival in the U.S. they say they are not farm workers but taxi drivers, or masons in Jamaica," he explained. "We want to avoid this."
The Minister revealed that since the new measures took effect, some 2,600 applicants had been rejected so far this year. "If you cannot complete your application properly and if you cannot do what you apply for, then we cannot interview you," he pointed out.
Mr. Dalley also appealed to employers at the meeting to recruit workers only through his Ministry. "This is the best safeguard against recruiting the wrong persons who will only end up giving the farm and hotel work programmes a bad name," he noted.
The meeting was attended by representatives from the United States Embassy and ministries of labour of Jamaica, Dominica, St. Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados.
