CSME awareness being enhanced via workshop

Oct 20, 2016 News

Local stakeholders are being provided with necessary knowledge and understanding of Caribbean Community Single Market and Economy (CSME) labour market by way of a three-day workshop offered by the Ministry of Social Protection and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).
The workshop opened yesterday at the Ministry of Social Protection’s Water and Cornhill Streets location in Georgetown. Organisers of the event are hoping to provide participants with the requisite information and its use in policy and planning of the CSME labour market.
The workshop targets persons from specific professional groups, including officials from the departments of statistics, finance, planning, health, education, social security, as well as trade unions and employers’ organisations.
Facilitators of the workshop include Ministry of Social Protection’s Assistant Chief Labour Occupation Health and Safety Officer, Lydia Green, Deputy Programme Manager of Free Movement and Labour, CARICOM Secretariat, CSME Unit, Dr. Olivia Smith and CARICOM consultant on the Economy for Labour and Population, Dr. William House.
In her remarks yesterday, Ms. Green explained that the training will equip stakeholders with the essential information to operate a system that will provide them with statistics to enhance the mobility of skills in the common space offered through CSME.
“Our world resolves around statistics and specifically, in the context of the free movement of people, a Labour Market Information System is critical, as it aids informed decisions critical to solving many problems we face”, Green said.
According to Green, the statisticians and technical personnel in Guyana can offer essential insight into determining which data and conclusions are reliable.
“You can map our trends and guide our progress. I therefore urge you to maximize on this training opportunity so that we could have a reliable Labour Market Information System”.
Further she said that, this is not just critical to the needs of Guyana, but to the functionality of Guyana as a CARICOM partner that embraces the free movement of skills, and to enhance our relations with sister countries that have signed onto this important treaty to promote free movement.
She stressed that “each member state must commit to and ensure that workers are respected; there must be fair treatment of workers without regard to nationality, socio-background or race. These principles are crucial to any effort at enhancing the competitiveness and productivity of our regional workforce”.
“Creating an effective Labour Market Information System would allow us to support such an ideal. A Labour Market Information System would provide us critical data to measure the progress we are making with regard to implementing the Caricom Single Market and Economy (CSME), identify our strengths and weaknesses; aid job seekers and employers; and facilitate information sharing to concerned parties.”
In her presentation, Dr. Olivia Smith further explained that the workshop is one of several activities for the establishment of a Regional Labour Market Information System for the Proper Management of the Regime for the Free Movement of Skills within the CSME.
She noted that, “the CSME Market is open to several categories of the free movement of skills which include university graduates, sportspersons, media workers, musicians, artistes, non-graduate nurses, non-graduate teachers, associate degrees/equivalent – two CAPE and two A’ Level, also artisans with a Caribbean Vocational Qualification (CVQ) and household domestics with a CVQ.
The gathering was reminded that Caricom Heads mandated, “the development and adoption of a regional project to build a regional electronic network for labour market information and statistics and strengthen the management capability”.
Dr. Smith said that it was further noted that “this is necessary to improve data and information retrieval in order to effectively monitor the functioning, performance and economic impact of free movement on the labour market and to calibrate labour market policy”.

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