PM: Opportunities to train, get work available but Barbadians must go after them

“You can’t sit down at home doing nothing and expect to get a job. People have to go and they have to get a skill.”

Prime Minister Mia Mottley delivered that sobering advice to Barbadians on Monday evening as she engaged in what she called “straight talk” at a more than four-hour one-on-one conversation with constituents across St Michael at the Parish Speaks town hall meeting at Solidarity House.

In response to concerns raised by Tanya Goodridge of Chapman Street, St Michael about the high level of unemployment in her community which was forcing some people to turn to the illegal drug trade to survive, Mottley was at pains to point out that not enough people were exploring available opportunities.

She first zeroed in on the construction sector, telling the gathering that the country was now experiencing a construction boom, and having launched the Construction Gateway programme designed to give Barbadians the opportunity to learn skills including backhoe operation, bricklaying, well digging, steel bending, welding and more, the country was in serious need of skilled labour.

“Almost every tradesman in this country we have a shortage of, but yet we have people who say they can’t find work. This country is going to go through a construction boom, it is starting. We had real problems with access to labour and the rebuilding of houses. And that’s one of the reasons why the price of labour in this country for house building went straight up,” she said, expressing concern that young people were no longer getting involved in areas such as joinery and plumbing.

The prime minister got the backing of her Senior Minister with responsibility for Infrastructural Projects Dr William Duguid who underscored that the construction boom was set to take off next March with over 110 different projects in the pipeline.

“Even if we just look at the capital projects between the hotel projects and all of the infrastructure, the Geriatric Hospital being built, the other hospitals that we’re looking at, the one in Warrens – that is just those large projects. But in addition, we still have all of the housing projects that we have to build as well and when you add in all of the housing projects and on top of that, you also have an urban renewal programme that we’re looking at as well, if you put all of the numbers together or all of the people working on all these various projects, we will not have enough people and enough contractors to do all of the projects together.

“So we have to run the Construction Gateway and we encourage as many people as possible [to] get more people involved because if you don’t have those numbers, it means it takes longer to get the projects done.”

St Michael resident Tanya Goodridge.

Mottley warned Barbadians that nobody was going to give them anything and urged citizens to rise above what she called a “culture of contentment that could lead to destruction”.

“We gotta get it right because if we don’t get it right, here’s what’s gonna happen – the same people who need buildings built are going to come and tell me they want to bring in labour and if I don’t let them do it then the country not growing. If the country is not growing, then we ain’t earning taxes, and if we ain’t earning taxes to do the roads and fix the things that we need to do, the hospital and do everything else, what will happen?”

St Michael South Central MP Marsha Caddle proposed that skilled persons be allowed to provide training to individuals in their communities to complement the Construction Gateway programme.

“I have three joiners in Brittons Hill alone and they’ve come and said, ‘look, some of these young people that are right next door to me, I want to be able to train them right here at my workshop where I am’. So, I think that if we could incorporate that approach, Construction Gateway at the national level would not have to catch everybody. But I also think that the odds of actually getting these young people to go next door or to go to the mechanic down the road might be an approach that we would want to look at,” she said.

Prime Minister Mottley also made clear that opportunities extended beyond the construction sector as she reported success in programmes sponsored by the Student Revolving Loan, including a four-month cybersecurity training that saw 120 out of 140 participants completing the course and immediately gaining jobs earning more than $5 000 monthly.

She disclosed that the government was also seeking to attract 2 000 people to do an Artificial Intelligence (AI) course for two months.

“And those people…most of them will get jobs and they are likely to start at $2 500 a month…. All of these jobs are not out here; these ones are predominantly in Canada. Last week in Saudi Arabia, I also spoke once again to the Canadians who are looking to work with the Saudis and the Qataris and also doing more of these courses…. The truth is that they want 10 000, but I’m frightened to commit to 10 000 until I know I can get 10 000 people interested,” she said.

Mottley urged the St Michael constituents to reach out to unemployed family members and friends to take advantage of the opportunities.

“What I cannot do is having brought the courses here, having got 15 000 courses on Coursera free, having paid for people to go to university free of charge, having ensured that we can expand courses at the Samuel Jackman Prescod Institute of Technology and the Community College and the Construction Gateway, we can’t bring the people to study. You got to go home and in the communities and tell them get up and come forward.” (SD)