Mark Beckford, Gleaner Writer

Management consultant, Dr. Henley Morgan, with graduates of the Chapman Graduate School of Business, Florida International University. The graduates were successful in the master of science programme in human resource management. The ceremony was held at the Hilton hotel in New Kingston, on Saturday. - Rudolph Brown/Chief Photographer

Business consultant and educator, Dr. Henley Morgan, believes that current government policies are not stemming the current brain drain which he believes is crippling vital sectors of the country.

Dr. Morgan told The Gleaner on the weekend that the Government was not doing enough to harness the talent of tertiary graduates.

He was speaking after addressing the graduating class of Chapman Graduate School of Business, Florida International University, master of science in human resources programme at the Hilton Kingston Hotel.

Brain drain often involves the loss of skilled intellectual and technical labour through the movement of such labour to more favourable geographic, economic or profes-sional environments.

Dr. Morgan believes that too many Jamaicans with tertiary level education leave the island to become "third class citizens" in a first world country, which leaves a gap in Jamaica, thus limiting the country's growth.

Reclaim talent

"It is estimated that 77 per cent of Jamaicans with tertiary qualification reside in the U.S. - and I think that some of our policymakers are speaking glibly about export of labour and talent, but I think they only do that because they don't understand what they are saying," he said.

Dr. Morgan added that, while graduates should be allowed to go where they please, a national policy should be instituted to reclaim talent as investment follows talent.

"What is required is an economy that is growing and you can't get an economy that is growing without the high-level skills that provide the ideas which are, in fact, the main tradable commodities these days," he argued.

He used the example of India, which has been making attempts to reverse the brain drain, and said Jamaica should seek to build a specific policy around talent.

"In the same way the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) has developed a protocol relating to people who have professional skills traveling among the territories, similarly a country like Jamaica could develop a policy about how you grow talent, how you develop talent, how you retain talent, and how you retrieve and recover talent," he said.