CASTRIES, St. Lucia, CMC – The St. Lucia government says it has commissioned the National Insurance Corporation (NIC) to present proposals for the establishment of an unemployment insurance programme here.
Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Phillip J Pierre, said that the unemployment insurance programme is intended to benefit nationals who become involuntarily unemployed.
“In keeping with the government’s policy to improve the quality of life and social protections afforded to citizens, the government has commissioned the National Insurance Corporation (NIC) to present proposals for the establishment of an unemployment insurance programme,” Pierre told reporters.
“This programme will allow persons who have become involuntarily unemployed to receive unemployment benefits. The government is committed to establishing this unemployment insurance program, which will be implemented alongside an active labour market policy,” he added.
The government says that the active labour policy will assist the unemployed by providing basic work training for disadvantaged groups, in particular, by securing work placements that encourage entrepreneurship and small business development, and by giving employer incentives for the provision of staff training.
“Involuntary unemployment means you become unemployed through no fault of your own, and most importantly, the active labor market policy where the NIC will try to reskill and retrain so that those who become unemployed can get another job.
“We don’t want people in a perpetual state of unemployment, and the government pays. If a person has lost a job involuntarily, the NIC will try to retrain that person so that they can obtain alternative employment. It is a stopgap measure between losing one job and gaining other, meaningful employment,” Pierre added.
The government describes the involuntarily unemployed as those persons who are willing to work but are unable to due to business closures, job cuts, seasonal fluctuations, or mismatched skillsets.
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