With nearly 3 000 applications in just over three months, the Barbados Hospitality Gateway Training Initiative (BHGTI) is gaining rapid traction as the government moves to fill thousands of vacancies in an expanding tourism industry, according to the technical and vocational training minister.
This government workforce development initiative was initially established to train 5 000 people. According to one hotel industry leader, challenges were being encountered in finding people with “the right talent and the right fit for all the positions that we have available within the industry”.
Minister Sandra Husbands said the BHGTI was providing training in the skills needed for all areas within the hospitality industry.
Noting that there were nine new hotels planning to open here, the minister said 4 000 additional hotel workers were needed.
“This is one of the reasons why we are specifically targeting construction to build hotels and homes and targeting hospitality training so that there are sufficient workers so that they can meet the demand,” she added.
The minister explained that her department was also working in collaboration with the labour ministry to conduct market assessments to see where training should be focused. She said that such a step was necessary to ensure that people could find jobs upon completing the training.
“So they will share with us what are the skill sets, what are the areas that have needs and we will then structure our training. So our training then will be demand driven, so if we have 10 000 bellmen and we don’t need any more, then we will reduce the training for bellmen and then increase it for chefs. The beauty of this is that it gives an almost guarantee to a person who trains that the opportunity for a job is very real and will be there when they have completed their training.
“So we are trying to make sure that we have a complete circle that will improve employment and earning opportunities for young people and for families.”
The vocational education minister noted that additional arrangements had been made for spaces to accommodate the number of applicants.
“We recognise that we don’t have the physical capacity at the three institutions that currently offer the courses. So we have made arrangements with the Ministry of Education Transformation to use ten of their schools to allow us to increase the number of people that we could train for the hospitality industry.”
(JB)
The post Hospitality training scheme draws nearly 3 000 applicants in three months – Govt appeared first on Barbados Today.
