BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - A senior Barbados government minister says production integration is key to economic development across the region to allow Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries create the results that are needed and to lessen their dependency on those coming to their rescue.
Students and staff of the University of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT) touring the Williams Industries PV plant, in Cane Carden, St. Thomas (BGIS Photo)“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 maximise the land space that you have in Belize… in Suriname,… in Guyana, and you can maximise 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 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 utilise 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 students of the UTT to not just visit a number of enterprises in Barbados, but have a first-hand look at how its businesses function, exposing their strengths and weaknesses.
“I believe that this is a wonderful endeavour 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 for 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 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 the Master’s programmes in Innovation, Manufacturing, Management and Entrepreneurship as well as Innovative Design and Entrepreneurship and the study tour is being done 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 recognised 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 simultaneously helping them to mature in a very short space of time, since they are being exposed to over 12 companies.
“Every year, we identify a regional economy that is of value or in alignment with our objectives, within the programme, 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 also helps them to 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 quite well kept secrets.
“We went to Lenstec…, which is a world class manufacturing facility right here in Barbados. We went to McBrides, who is 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’, there is a struggle in trying to achieve specific goals, even though there is an input of work because there is also a lack of sharing and collaboration.
