MANAGING Director of National Commercial Bank (NCB), Aubyn Hill, has proposed that government and the private sector embark on a joint initiative to train Jamaican workers for the overseas job market as one way of easing the country’s economic burden.

The country, he said, needs to take “a radical approach to training our best minds, for the slogan ‘fit for export’.”

“If those countries’ needs are for nurses, teachers, accountants and computer programmers, then we should get to work producing these skilled persons for the overseas labour market,” Hill argued.

However, the banking executive said a team of government and private sector officials should first approach more developed countries to ascertain their labour needs, and then set about filling them.

He was participating in a panel discussion, exploring the theme: “Educating for export: is the nation getting value for its investment?”

For her part, dean of the University of Technology’s (UTech) Faculty of Education, Dr Geraldene Hodlein blamed the island’s current brain drain problem on government’s failure to attract investment.

“It goes without saying; the government is not attracting adequate levels of investment in production to increase employment, so we have to look to exporting our skilled labour,” Hodlein said.

The NCB managing director agreed that by exporting skilled labour, the island would benefit significantly and said the first area of focus should be tertiary institutions, that would produce the “final product”.

However, he added that “the labour export programme would eventually impact on secondary and primary institutions of learning, as students would begin preparing for the international labour market from an early age”.

Hill informed the Terra Nova Hotel gathering that other countries such as India and Sri Lanka were already tapping into the lucrative labour export market and reaping the benefits in valuable remittances, and even special government bond offers to their non-resident citizens.

He added that one such Indian bond offer to raise US$4 billion was oversubscribed in 10 days.