President of Jamaica Trade and Invest, Robert Gregory (left), in discussion with managing director Ian Wilkinson (second left) and general manager Sasha-Nicole Noble (second right), both of Magnificent Chess Limited, and Karen Gilbert, financial controller at Kingston Wharves Limited, at Tuesday's Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica Job Creation Awards breakfast, at the Terra Nova All Suite Hotel in St. Andrew. -Ian Allen/Staff Photographer

Susan Gordon, Business Reporter

The new president of Jamaica Trade and Invest (JTI), Robert Gregory, in his first public-speaking engagement, chose a topic in which he was truly grounded - the need for Jamaica to change the profile of its workforce.

A qualified workforce with skills that are mobile not only gives them advantage in the cross-border competition for jobs but, as Gregory points out, is a hook for new investments.

So, as he did when he ran the HEART Trust/NTA, Gregory went to bat for transformation of the education system, whose orientation is graduating students who are in a position to acquire technical and practical skills.

"Education makes you trainable and being trainable makes you employable," he said, a quote he has used before as boss of the training agency.

Economic advantage

"Education sustains economic competitiveness and gives us the economic advantage," he told corporate bosses at the monthly breakfast meeting for the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) Job Creation Awards.

The new JTI president who made his name by building HEART into a premier training agency, with a regionwide reputation, has the respect of employers as a sound manager with a practical knowledge of private-sector labour needs.

In fact, PSOJ vice-president Richard Chen, who bluntly dismissed several government agencies as wasters of resources, including the agency Gregory now heads, said the new JTI president was a good pick for the post.

Chen said Gregory was wasted in the public sector, but notes he was likely to do a good job of transforming the image of the former Jampro, as he did for HEART Trust, and stripping away some of the bureaucracy that potential investors have long complained hampers the trade and investment promotion agency's effectiveness.

Gregory, taking the podium after Chen's ringing endorsement, pointed to examples in Central America, Europe and Asia where countries transformed their economies using the skills base of their workforce as selling points.

"We need to move from this low-wage, low-skill workforce," said Gregory.

The profile of Jamaica's workforce began to take on new significance in thelast two to three years, when it became clear that Jamaican construction workers largely did not have the skills sets required by Alcoa, and were likely to lose out on the thousands of jobs to be created by the US$1.2 billion Jamalco expansion project.

The same issue arose with the US$120 million Caribbean Cement plant expansion, prompting the creation of specialised training programmes to put Jamaicans in a position to qualify for work utilising technologies with which many were unfamiliar.

Spanish investments

The majority of jobs, however, would have come from the Spanish hotels.

A year ago, Spanish Ambassador Jess Silva told Wednesday Business tha investments in Jamaica by Spanish investors were approaching US$1.5 billion.

The Piero Group alone was said to have created some 40,000 jobs with its construction of 10,000 hotel rooms.

It is not clear, however, what percentage of these jobs required high skills, or how many flowed to Jamaicans.

The odds, as Gregory continues to preach, would rise in Jamaica's favour if the system could churn out the graduates.

"We want an education system to create value for learners," he emphasised.

To get there, Jamaica should increase contact hours in the schools from six to eight hours per day, and up the number of school days from 180 to 220-225 days, as exists in places like Japan and other advanced societies, Gregory proposed.

susan.gordon@gleanerjm.com