BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC -A senior Barbados government minister says production integration is key to economic development across the region. It will allow Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries to achieve the needed results and lessen their dependency on those coming to their rescue.
“We have to stop thinking as Barbadians, Trinidadians, Jamaicans, and treat the space as our space, and pool the capital and the resources [which] make it easy for persons like yourself to be able to move across the region with ease and work,” Minister of Training and Tertiary Education, Sandra Husbands, told a group of visiting students and staff of the University of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT).
“If we can have integration of our production, we can maximize the land space that you have in Belize… in Suriname,… in Guyana, and you can maximize the knowledge capacity that you have in Trinidad and Barbados and Jamaica, etc. to be able to build out world-class facilities that have as their view, the world … as the market that we are going to serve, and we need to get there,” she told the delegation that visited the Williams Industries PV plant, in Cane Carden, St. Thomas.
Husbands said that the government is focused on not just ‘arming’ students with the technical skills that they need in a particular field but also on providing them with the entrepreneurial outlook, business training, and whatever else is necessary for them to take what they have learnt and build enterprises that can compete globally.
“One of the things that has to happen in education is that we have to be able to train our students, as many of them as we can, in the higher level skills, especially in the Tech Voc. (Technical and Vocational) area.
“This will allow us to be able to create a workforce that will be able to attract investment to utilize those skills and to earn the higher salaries,” she said, adding, “This is what is going to generate the economic growth and sustain the services that we are so accustomed to.”
Husbands described the island-wide study tour as a great opportunity for UTT students to visit a number of enterprises in Barbados and have a first-hand look at how their businesses function, exposing their strengths and weaknesses.
“I believe that this is a wonderful endeavor because one of the things that must happen in the region we have to raise professionals who understand the problems and the needs of the region so that when we are doing research when we’re doing innovation, we’re innovating to present solutions for the country. Those have to come from us, and there’s nobody better to do it than for us to do it ourselves.”
Husbands also expressed appreciation to the touring party for participating in the initiative. “Our people are as brilliant as anyone in the world. We only have to look at steel pans…. We only have to look at the carnival…. We only have to look at what is happening in technology.
“Our people are able; they are creative; they are innovative, and so I want to sincerely salute UTT in what you are doing today by visiting us here in Barbados,” she said.
The students are pursuing Master’s programs in Innovation, Manufacturing, Management, and Entrepreneurship, as well as Innovative Design and Entrepreneurship. The study tour is being conducted in collaboration with the Ministries of Innovation, Science and Technology, Energy and Business, and Training and Tertiary Education.
Assistant Professor of the Mechanical Engineering, Manufacturing, and Entrepreneurship Units at UTT, Dr. Jorrel Bisnath, explained that the students participating in these specific areas were chosen because the university and the Government of Trinidad and Tobago have recognized them as being critical for sustainable development.
Bisnath said the UTT hopes that initiatives like the study tour will expose the students to the best of professional business practices while helping them mature quickly, as they will be exposed to over 12 companies.
“Every year, we identify a regional economy that is of value or in alignment with our objectives within the program, which is to support manufacturing, entrepreneurship, and innovation, and our students are expected to identify what best practices take place in these economies, … compare them to Trinidad and Tobago, [and] look for opportunities for integration, development, adoption and also growth,” he said.
He added that this type of exposure allows the students to exercise their corporate skills and professional expectations and helps them easily integrate into regional work environments.
“We know that for us as a region to progress, we must develop these inherent talents… and in viewing and visiting the companies that we’ve been exposed to here, I think it would have been apparent that we are doing so many things very well, but they’re also exceptionally well-kept secrets.
“We went to Lenstec…, which is a world-class manufacturing facility right here in Barbados. We went to McBrides, a leading distributor of aerosols across the region and delving into North America as well… and all of these companies have told us that Barbados is not a manufacturing economy.”
The UTT professor noted that although countries like Trinidad and Barbados are producing ‘world-class outputs with limited resources,’ achieving specific goals is a struggle, even though work is involved because there is also a lack of sharing and collaboration.
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