Prime Minister Holness Urges National Focus on Training and Certification to Relieve Constraints on Growth
Prime Minister Dr. the Most Hon. Andrew Holness says labour availability has now become the most serious constraint on Jamaica’s economic growth and is calling for a national effort to get more Jamaicans trained and certified to meet the growing demand for jobs.
Speaking at the ribbon cutting ceremony marking the expansion of the Garmex Free Zone, which is projected to create over 3,000 permanent jobs at its completion, the Prime Minister said the country must move with urgency to ensure the local workforce is fully prepared to take advantage of new opportunities.
“We still have a number of Jamaicans who could be in the labour force, but they have opted not to be. And we still have Jamaicans who are in the labour force, but they are underemployed because they do not have skills or, more critically, they do not have certification,” the Prime Minister stated.
“Some of them have skills, but they need certification in order to get into the employment that they would want. So there is still some amount of technical work to be done within our demographics to ensure that we maximize our local population in the labour pool.”
The Prime Minister encouraged Jamaicans to make use of available training and upskilling opportunities, especially through HEART/NSTA Trust, which he said has been tasked with responding directly to labour market demands.
“You have to start from now working in very close collaboration with HEART Trust NSTA to make sure that you have the requisite labour force,” he told stakeholders at the event.
Prime Minister Holness said the labour issue has now replaced fiscal instability and crime as the leading constraint on national development but emphasized that those other challenges are being steadily addressed.
“Before, the constraint on growth was our fiscal situation. We have largely solved that. Then there was the constraint of crime on growth. We are solving that now. The binding constraint now is labour availability. There are still other constraints, and one of them is energy,” he said.
The Prime Minister added that the Government will soon outline new measures to relieve energy costs as part of its wider push to remove all barriers to faster, more inclusive economic growth.
“Very soon you will be hearing some things that we intend to say about how we are going to relieve the energy constraints on growth. But you can see that very systematically, we are doing what it takes to ensure that Jamaica can attain rapid growth,” he said.
Dr. Holness concluded that Jamaica is on an upward trajectory and that with the right investments in training and certification, the country is poised to break out of its flat growth trend.
“We are creating the jobs. Now we must prepare our people to take them,” the Prime Minister said.