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The new Govt. should launch a comprehensive labour market survey

Jan 14, 2012 Letters

 

 

Dear Editor,
As part of the run-up to the 2011 election, Stabroek News invited the political parties to submit weekly columns in their Sunday Stabroek.  The Column written by David Granger on November 27th, 2011 caught my eyes, especially the comments on “The employment crisis”.
Mr. Granger quoted the latest Household Income and Expenditure Survey which disclosed about half of the population is not gainfully employed.
On the other hand, the PPP Minister of Labour in September 2011 asserted, with official truth, that only 10.7 percent of the country’s total workforce is unemployed.
These apparently contradictory figures have been arrived at because it is the convention throughout the world, to record as “unemployed” only those who have officially sought, but have not obtained, employment. However, despite the validity of the official statistics, the sad fact is that, in addition to the 10.7 percent of our workforce that is officially unemployed, many who would like to work are not actively seeking jobs simply because they have abandoned all hope of ever finding suitable occupations, while others, though nominally employed, are earning incomes and wages that condemn them to “livelihoods” below the poverty line and exist outside of the official economy deeming them “part-time employed phantoms” with little or no fringe benefits.
The recommended methodology to more accurately understand the employment crisis in Guyana is to conduct a comprehensive labour-related survey.  These kinds of studies were the antithesis to the Jagdeo regime.  They did not have the political appetite and strategic intellect to deal these human development realities, so the easy way out for them; guess the unemployment figures.
The empirical evidence for my statements can be found from the army of ex-sugar workers, bauxite workers and public servants who have left their official occupation but have not registered themselves as being unemployed. Instead, they occupy themselves as hucksters, as petty traders, and as small-time entrepreneurs, barely managing to survive and are non-existent on the PPP unemployment register. Thus it is fair to conclude that the Jagdeo years were disastrous years for employment creation in Guyana.
But the bigger issue remains the PPP’s difficulty in attracting sizeable investments of the size of OMAI, DDL and Banks DIH, which could significantly make an impact on the burgeoning ranks of the unemployed. The Jagdeo regime sold to the nation those investments like the one by Queens Atlantic into Sanata Textiles as deserving of tax holidays because of the number of jobs they would create.
We were told by GO-INVEST that the privatization deal with Queens Atlantic was supposed to create 180 bio-technology and textile-related jobs in the medical plaster industry among others, with cash investments into the economy of $3.4 billion into this venture.
Judge for yourself the track record of this deal that benefitted from tens of millions of dollars in tax holidays.  This is a clear example of PPP public policies not driven by job creation projects but more focused on ulterior agendas that benefited a select few at the expense of the many.
We as a nation must legislate to our Government that they must never submit us to follow unassailable poor public policies that are driven by economic forces that reward political rulers and their business buddies rather than the nation such as the Queens Atlantic deal or the Fip Motilall deal.  Such kinds of public policies will always bear down on Guyana worse than any natural disaster and that is why we are where we are. The second poorest in the Caribbean!
There is much expectation on the new Ramotar administration to do the responsible act.  At a minimum, this new Government should launch a comprehensive labour market survey and use these numbers to effectively plan and create new jobs in the next five years.
Sasenarine Singh

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