In recent days, Pearnel Charles, the labour and social security minister, raised two ideas, one of which, on reflection, he would deem unfeasible and dangerous to business if enforced.

Mr Charles' second suggestion contains the germ of something, but we suspect that he misapprehended US President-elect Barack Obama's job initiative and the prospect of Jamaicans to climb aboard in any substantial way.

The minister's statement provides an opportunity for debate and analysis of education and training in Jamaica, and how public policy might be used to produce graduates capable of competing in today's fast-paced world where technical and technological competence are the new comparative advantage.

To be fair to Mr Charles, he, more than anyone else in government, has displayed a sense of realism about the global economic crisis and its potential consequences for Jamaica. Long before it was in vogue for public officials to admit grudgingly the possibility, Mr Charles was warning of likely job losses and talked with employers about limiting the fallout.

Now, he is proposing that if firms have to cut staff, employees being made redundant should be allowed to maintain health and education benefits for up to two years.

Good gesture

That would be a good humanitarian gesture.

Mr Charles, however, misses a fundamental point: Most firms don't make staff redundant just because they can do it, but because they have to if they are to survive. Redundancies are usually a last resort to cut costs so as to maintain the financial viability of a firm and secure the jobs of the employees who remain.

Yet, this is not easy for Jamaican firms to do given the current laws covering redundancy payments. At precisely the time when firms are stressed, are short of cash and should be putting capital into the business to ensure survival, they often have to borrow to meet redundancy obligations. Only the most powerful companies can afford to restructure.

It is time, we feel, for Jamaica to revisit the redundancy law, perhaps replacing the payment requirement with an employee-contributed unemployment insurance scheme operated by the National Insurance Fund. Staff who never call on the fund could perhaps redeem a portion of their contribution in additional retirement benefits.

On the other matter, Mr Charles has highlighted Mr Obama's push for congressional spending to create 2.5 million jobs over the next few years to help jump-start the stalled American economy. Mr Charles says that Jamaica is training and certifying workers to grab some of these jobs, as if Mr Obama's concern would be about the unemployed in Kingston or elsewhere.

New emphasis on training

We are, nonetheless, happy for this new emphasis on training and certifying workers, which is sorely needed here. But Mr Obama's emphasis has largely been jobs in energy-related and technical areas - the new economy, where skills have lagged severely in Jamaica.

We are just not training enough people in engineering and science or technology. Indeed, of the more than 3,200 Jamaicans who graduated from the University of the West Indies in 2007, three-quarters were in the arts and humanities. A mere 28 were in engineering and three in agriculture. At the University of Technology, only 11 per cent of students are enrolled in engineering.

Many things are required to fix this imbalance, but in the short term, shifting subsidies in favour of engineering and technology students is necessary.

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