THE Jamaica Chamber of Commerce (JCC) is broadly supportive of current calls to liberalise the labour market to allow employers to source skilled labour from overseas in instances in which their inability to source workers locally is limiting their ability to grow.

It is clear, though, that such a policy must be accompanied by a laser-focused drive to better align the nation’s education and training institutions with the current and projected requirements of the business community.

In the process, the nation must engage in robust discussion with all stakeholders, while the debate itself must feature a candid self-assessment of where we are as a nation now and where we want to be in the years ahead.

We can begin with the fact that more than a few Jamaican firms are proudly on record affirming that Jamaican workers, properly capacitated, are able to perform at world-class levels. This at the same time as quite a number of Jamaican firms are also on record complaining that far too many people are still entering the labour market with minimal preparedness for the realities of the workplace, including deficiencies in basic competencies, such as literacy and numeracy. The two realities, sadly, coexist.

This fact likely explains why a limited number of large firms and a few medium-size firms have partnered with vocational and tertiary institutions to develop their own in-house “academies” where they have been able to build on the human resources emanating from the nation’s educational institutions with the goal of creating — primarily for their own operations — a pool of productive, job-trained personnel.

A number of those firms that have international operations have implemented practices such as rotating their personnel across their sites so as to enable them to derive diverse experiential benefits and empowering them to become even more productive.

However, such firms are few and far between. It would be unrealistic to expect that this will become the norm for the micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) that comprise the majority of our employers.

While on-the-job training is always a component of the productive workplace, it cannot replace the necessity for specific, job-ready skills being available to firms as and when needed, and if our national educational framework does not facilitate such preparedness, then we are placing limitations on our scope for growth. In a situation in which firms are appealing for a more liberal labour mobility policy to facilitate their current and projected investments, we should prioritise its consideration.

We understand that this is a matter of concern for some operators and would-be investors in our tourism industry. At a time when the industry worldwide is slowly emerging from the worst impacts of the pandemic, Jamaica is fortunate that both our domestic operators and their foreign counterparts are not only moving full speed ahead in reviving their existing operations but are also being joined by others who had previously put their plans on hold and are now seeking to fast-track their ventures.

While we can anticipate that many former employees in the sector, who may have left during the pandemic-inspired downturn will return to the industry, it is also likely that significant numbers will have moved on to other callings. It is in this context, we understand, that some of the requests are being made for the flexibility to access the skilled labour pool outside of the country.

Understandably, some concerns have been raised regarding the likely impact of such liberalisation. What impact is it likely to have on the domestic labour market, even in a context in which overall unemployment rates have been trending downwards?

The pragmatic use of a revamped work permit policy may provide built-in control. To be clear, it is difficult to assess the impact of our current work permit policy as information on its effectiveness is not easily available. While we can track the number of approvals given, we don’t know, for instance, whether that data ever feed into the educational and training institutions so that we can ensure that we are able to produce workers to meet future needs in those areas.

As the country debates this issue, it should also not be forgotten that multiple thousands of Jamaicans, over many decades, have themselves migrated for a range of reasons, but perhaps most significantly for economic and economic-adjacent reasons.

Many descendants of Jamaicans who migrated in the 1940s and 1950s still maintain strong linkages with the country of their parents and grandparents, and today — along with more recent emigrants as well as seasonal employees and performing artistes and athletes — contribute to our economy in the form of remittances and as consumers of products and services emanating from this country. Indeed, in recent years the inflow of remittances has often proved to be a larger source of our available foreign exchange than tourism or exports.

More recently, Jamaicans have been seizing opportunities within Caricom under the region’s skilled workers’ programme. Notwithstanding the issues limiting its widespread implementation within the region, members of the Jamaican workforce are realising that this may be a valuable and viable path to their own individual economic growth.

The truth is that Jamaica cannot realistically expect that the traffic will flow only in one direction. From the perspective of the JCC, this is only to be expected in a small, open economy with a limited consumer base, at a point in world affairs when economies are becoming increasingly intertwined.

Ian Neita is president of the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce.