JALGO calls for gov't to address labour market issues

   

In light of Canada's announcement that it will reduce temporary foreign workers, Helene Davis Whyte, General Secretary of the Jamaica Association of Local Government Officers (JALGO), is calling for the government to address the country's labour market issues.

 

Canada has said it will among other changes, refuse to process some work permits in areas where the unemployment rate is 6% or higher, with exceptions for seasonal food and agriculture jobs, construction and healthcare.

 

The changes will come into effect on September 26.

 

Speaking with Radio Jamaica News, Mrs. Davis Whyte insisted that the pending restructuring of the temporary foreign worker programme will affect Jamaicans. 

 

"When we arranged meetings through the Migrant Workers Alliance, several of those persons who attended those meetings were not actual farm workers as we know them to be, but really persons on the temporary programme working in other areas. It tells us that there...were a lot more persons in other areas distinct from the seasonal agricultural workers programme," she noted, adding that the programme which allowed people to pursue tertiary education while they work in Canada, has also been cut. 

 

Mrs. Davis Whyte said the Jamaican government needs to be more proactive in keeping people within the labour force. 

 

"We have to do whatever needs to be done to solve all labour market problems and a big part of our problem is low wage, and you have to find some means of dealing with that. If you don't find a means of dealing with that, you will have a person opting out of the labour force as is the situation that we have seen right now," she said, pointing to a shortage of workers in the hotel sector.