Government’s ongoing National Recruitment Drive has expectedly drawn an overwhelming response from citizens.
According to Works and Infrastructure Minister Jearlean John, over 11,000 people applied online on the first day of the process, which ends on Friday. Hundreds more turned up for in-person applications at the National Cycling Velodrome in Couva on Sunday–all hoping to land dream jobs across 25 ministries in the Government sector.
Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has indicated that the second phase will offer 50,000 jobs, but there has been no further information on the entities that will be involved.
This rollout will, however, be critical, as, ideally, Government should aim for the private sector to absorb more of the candidates, since the State should never seek to function as the main employer in a country.
There is no doubt, though, that it is a much-needed drive. The most recent figures reported by the Central Statistical Office (CSO) showed 31,900 people unemployed as at the first quarter of 2024. That, of course, has since increased with the Government’s purging of various ministries, state entities, and the CEPEP, URP and Reafforestation programmes. There are also scores of people with degrees who are underemployed and seeking higher-paying jobs in line with their qualifications and aspirations of achieving a certain standing in society.
The business sector has hailed the initiative as a positive move by Government, noting it can strengthen human capital, stimulate economic activity, and boost national confidence. There are also spinoff benefits to this exercise, including the fact that it can offer public and private sector employers the cream of T&T’s human capital and provide a new batch of young contributors to the National Insurance System, giving the fund the time it needs to recover from its current shock.
But what of the now jobless CEPEP and URP workers in particular?
During the national budget presentation, Finance Minister Dave Tancoo said that with the elimination of these programmes, an Employment Fund within the Ministry of Finance, totalling $475 million, will be utilised in combination with the $310 million Unemployment Fund to support job creation, but no specific concessions were announced for former CEPEP/URP workers.
It is no secret that while CEPEP/URP jobs created short-term employment, they did not provide workers with the wherewithal to adequately support their families. More importantly, the majority of these workers had no particular skill/trade that could make them employable in any other sector, and so these programmes offered an outlet.
Needless to say, unless the current Government job exercise also offers a training component, the majority of these individuals will not be able to access jobs. This is because even the Government would be foolhardy to bypass the more educated and skilled workers for vacancies, since ultimately it is productivity and efficiency, especially in today’s new AI-savvy world, which the public sector should also be seeking to achieve. This ultimately means that a younger, educated or skilled candidate will get the edge.
In the long run, then, it will be a question of whether this current drive genuinely seeks to bring relief to those at the lower rung of the labour ladder or is just another make-work gimmick. It makes this current drive one of the most important activities of the new Government’s governance of the country.
