Parliamentary Representative for Constituency Four and Minister of Tourism Hon. Lindsay Grant, says the People’s Employment Programme [PEP] has failed the country.
Mr. Grant, who was responding to a question about employment opportunities for residents of Challengers during a community town hall meeting, said PEP should have served as a training programme for residents.
“I’m in tourism as the Minister of Tourism. Right now, we have Park Hyatt that may come on stream in 11 months and we’re looking at December-January, the Park Hyatt is going to be looking for workers and the Park Hyatt will not be able to find the workers that they want. So you know what’s going to happen? Park Hyatt is going to come to the government and say ‘hey, we don’t have the skillsets that we need so we need to bring in some people.’ And when those people come in, the people in Challengers and beyond gon say ‘M’ain like that.’ Rather, we should have been preparing ourselves for the development and the growth that is coming,” he explained.
Grant said while he is not against persons working in the programme, he believes they should be doing jobs that will advance their lives.
“We should have been training people in air conditioning. We should have been training mechanics, we should have been training people in the hospitality industry, we should have been training chefs and all the ancillary people to be able to fill these positions that are going to come on board,” he said.
Meanwhile the former PM Douglas says he is of the view that the PEP program will be disbanded despite claims by the UNITY govt in their fair share manifesto that the program will be upgraded providing greater training and job opportunities for young people.
The PEP program currently employs some 3000 young people in St.Kitts and Nevis.