THE CARIBBEAN Cement Company has been in the news a lot lately on the negative side. But we have run a story recently on the decision of the company to hire only HEART Trust-certified workers on its expansion programme.
As the HEART Trust/National Training Agency itself has been pointing out, the vast majority of Jamaican workers have no formal certification for the jobs they are doing and many have no training either. Mandated by the Government, the agency has been moving to certify workers under its National Vocational Qualifications for Jamaica [NVQ-J] Programme.
Quite apart from national development needs in a modern economy, certification will be critical for worker mobility in the CARICOM Single Market and Economy. Speaking earlier this year at a life-long learning conference, the Executive Director of the HEART Trust/NTA, Robert Gregory, said the agency was seeking to certify half the workforce by 2008.
The Trinidad and Tobago-owned Caribbean Cement Company Limited (CCCL) has invested millions of dollars in the training and certification of hundreds of persons in its home community of Rockfort. These persons were trained at The HEART Vocational Training Centre in the area.
Member of Parliament Phillip Paulwell, who is also Minister of Industry, is fully backing the company that it will only employ these trained and certified persons in its expansion and modernisation programme. "We are insisting that only those persons who are trained get jobs," Mr. Paulwell declared at an employment fair involving the company and graduates from the HEART training programmes.
More usually it has been the reverse position where Members of Parliament have sought to use their influence to pack work sites with unskilled and uncertified persons often along party lines. The MP for East Kingston and Port Royal has also declared, against the backdrop of prevailing practice across the country, that extortion and brute force will be resisted. "People will not be employed on any strength of weaponry," he adamantly declared.
Nor will there be any gender bias for the 600 or so jobs that could become available at the CCCL at the peak of the expansion programme.
Certification for work is the inevitable wave of the future. Both at home and for migration, workers will be required to demonstrate by way of certificates from official agencies that they have work-ready skills. Like the Caribbean Cement Company, other employers can play a major role in this by encouraging and facilitating the certification of employees. Not everyone will need new training before certification. The HEART Trust/NTA certifies prior training after appropriate assessment of the skills acquired.
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