Gareth Manning, Gleaner Writer
PHILLIPS
MINISTER OF National Security, Dr. Peter Phillips, says the education system is failing to prepare youth for the job market, noting that nearly three-quarters of them have no certification, and only a quarter have completed at least four years of secondary school.
Dr. Phillips was speaking at the National Employers' Month public forum, held at the Knutsford Court Hotel in Kingston recently, under the theme: 'Partnerships for Youth in Enterprise Development and Business Success'.
NO ENERGY FOR WORK
The minister said half of the unemployed youth had never worked and had lost the energy to seek employment.
"If you leave school and for 10 years you do not work and have no opportunity to develop the habit of getting up every day, going to somewhere and forming a regular task over and over, the longer that period passes the more difficult it is to learn the routine of getting up every day and presenting yourself for employment and getting on with life," said the national security minister.
He encouraged unemployed youth to become aware of opportunities in the job market, pointing to expansion taking place in the tourism and bauxite and alumina sectors.
As part of the solution, the minister says schools need to introduce job experience into the curricula, arguing that the gap between learning and the working world is too great.
"Many people come in unprepared for the world of work and how to approach work," the minister told his audience.
He says the state needs to foster entrepreneurship among youth through improved support for the medium, small and micro business sector as the sector employs many youth.
NOT DOING ENOUGH
Opposition senator Dwight Nelson supported the minister's view, that schools were not doing enough to prepare young people for the labour market.
Senator Nelson, president of the Jamaica Confederation of Trade Unions, said the country's present education system cannot provide workers for the current labour market.
He noted that the modern labour market was multi-skilled and competitive and education is failing to prepare youth in this regard.
"We have an education system that provides for a labour market that existed 20 years ago," he noted
But the senator adds that national programmes geared at youth development need to be assessed and subsequently enhanced to better prepare them as entrepreneurs.
He says the private sector, for instance, needs to rely more on training institutions such as HEART/NTA for on-the-job certification.
