DR. WESLEY Hughes, director general of the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ), has pointed to the need for long-term investment in education and training to create an educated workforce that could respond to changes in industry.
Dr. Hughes, who was speaking at a community forum held last week at the St. Gabriel's Anglican Church Hall in May Pen, Claren-don, stated that shifts in industry required dedicated transformation of the lives of those affected, through education and training.
"There's no possibility of transforming the lives of those people without a serious long-term investment in education to train the people to do something else, to take up some other job...the investment in early childhood education, secondary education and training has to be sustained. There's no other alternative," he said.
Dr. Hughes noted that the transformation process would be a long-term one. "It's 20 years or more and it has to be concerted. You can't just simply say, we're out of sugar, let's plant something else, and that will do it. That may help but it's a stop-gap measure. At the end of the day, 25 years hence, the only real solution is if you invest in an educated workforce, who can take on any skill, any new industry, and that's the answer, (education and training) must be an important element of the solution," he stated.
