GEISHA KOW­LESSAR ALON­ZO

Is there a fu­ture for young peo­ple in this coun­try?

As T&T grap­ples with job loss­es in parts of the en­er­gy sec­tor, un­cer­tain­ty over the econ­o­my’s di­rec­tion and con­cerns about em­ploy­ment prospects, young peo­ple are be­ing en­cour­aged to see the cur­rent chal­lenges not as a dead end but as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to help shape their fu­ture.

That mes­sage emerged from a re­cent youth-fo­cused fo­rum, where speak­ers paint­ed a mixed pic­ture of the op­por­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges fac­ing young peo­ple en­ter­ing the work­force.

Among those of­fer­ing a youth per­spec­tive was 18-year-old St Mary’s Col­lege (CIC) sixth-form stu­dent Jalan Moughn, who ar­gued that young peo­ple must see them­selves as ac­tive par­tic­i­pants in the coun­try’s fu­ture rather than pas­sive ob­servers of cur­rent chal­lenges.

“It’s not just about what’s hap­pen­ing now but al­so that we are in con­trol of our fu­ture,” Moughn told the Busi­ness Guardian fol­low­ing a post pan­el bud­get dis­cus­sion held at St Mary’s Col­lege, Port-of-Spain on Tues­day.

He not­ed that young peo­ple should use their voic­es to in­flu­ence de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

“Youths are be­com­ing more aware of what is go­ing on now and youths are cur­rent­ly hav­ing a bit more say in what is hap­pen­ing cur­rent­ly. We need to get in­volved now, make our voic­es heard so that in the fu­ture it’s a re­flec­tion of some of the things that we would have want­ed.”

While ad­mit­ting that find­ing em­ploy­ment can be dif­fi­cult, Moughn said young peo­ple should not lose hope.

“I think it is a strug­gle. I’m not go­ing to lie, it is a strug­gle. How­ev­er, we do have the op­por­tu­ni­ty for our fu­ture to be chart­ed for us.”

Not all stu­dents shared the same lev­el of op­ti­mism.

Eigh­teen-year-old Kai Joseph, al­so a CIC stu­dent, said many young peo­ple are anx­ious about their prospects in a labour mar­ket that ap­pears in­creas­ing­ly un­cer­tain.

“I find it very dif­fi­cult to see any sort of fu­ture,” Joseph said adding, “In to­day’s day and age, it’s very dif­fi­cult to find a job. That’s the chal­lenge young peo­ple are fac­ing now.”

He al­so point­ed to on­go­ing lay­offs in some in­dus­tries and the grow­ing use of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence as fac­tors con­tribut­ing to con­cerns about long-term job se­cu­ri­ty.

Build­ing the skills for to­mor­row

For com­men­ta­tor and for­mer min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, Mar­i­ano Browne, the vary­ing lev­els of con­fi­dence among young peo­ple point to a much larg­er is­sue fac­ing the na­tion.

“Let’s put it this way: Trinidad and To­ba­go has no fu­ture if the youths do not see a fu­ture,” Browne said.

Re­flect­ing on his own ex­pe­ri­ence en­ter­ing the job mar­ket dur­ing a pe­ri­od of high un­em­ploy­ment, Browne said suc­cess ul­ti­mate­ly de­pends on de­vel­op­ing valu­able skills that em­ploy­ers are will­ing to seek out.

“When I left school, un­em­ploy­ment was 15 per cent and the un­em­ploy­ment rate among school leavers was prob­a­bly the high­est at the time. But I nev­er had a prob­lem in terms of find­ing a job. In fact, I nev­er had to ap­ply for a job. Peo­ple have al­ways come to me to seek out my tal­ent be­cause I have some sort of skillset. That’s the crit­i­cal area in terms of how you make your fu­ture,” he shared.

Browne ar­gued that while eco­nom­ic con­di­tions could in­flu­ence op­por­tu­ni­ties, in­di­vid­u­als must al­so take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for cre­at­ing their own path­ways to suc­cess as he ad­vised, “No­body is go­ing to make your fu­ture for you,” he said. Not­ing that part of that is be­ing self-start­ing and proac­tive, but it is al­so about how so­ci­ety in­cen­tivis­es and sup­ports young peo­ple.

He be­lieves one of the most im­por­tant ar­eas re­quir­ing at­ten­tion is the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, which he said must be aligned with the de­mands of a rapid­ly chang­ing glob­al econ­o­my.

“The ed­u­ca­tion of the fu­ture will be built on sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy and the hu­man­i­ties. You have to have them all,” Browne said adding, “Quite frankly, we haven’t re­al­ly gone back on what our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem is pro­duc­ing or where we want the di­rec­tion to go. We have to have a vi­sion.”

Ac­cord­ing to Browne, pro­vid­ing that sense of di­rec­tion is es­sen­tial to mo­ti­vat­ing young peo­ple and help­ing them see a fu­ture for them­selves in T&T.

Need for a na­tion­al vi­sion

That op­ti­mism was shared, al­though with some cau­tion, by econ­o­mist and busi­ness con­sul­tant Dr Jamelia Har­ris, who ar­gued that cre­at­ing a fu­ture that in­spires con­fi­dence among young peo­ple will re­quire bet­ter plan­ning and a clear­er na­tion­al vi­sion.

“I think the youths have a fu­ture, but I think for that fu­ture to gen­er­ate hope among young peo­ple we need to make the right de­ci­sions now,” Har­ris said.

Ac­cord­ing to Har­ris, pol­i­cy­mak­ers need to move be­yond short-term think­ing and fo­cus on build­ing the coun­try that to­day’s young peo­ple will in­her­it.

“That means piv­ot­ing from think­ing about to­day and to­mor­row to think­ing about five years and ten years and mak­ing sure the coun­try that our young peo­ple in­her­it is bet­ter than what we have to­day,” she said, adding that re­cent re­search she con­duct­ed re­vealed a wor­ry­ing lev­el of pes­simism among young peo­ple.

“I re­cent­ly did a sur­vey among young peo­ple in Trinidad and To­ba­go and sur­pris­ing­ly on­ly eight per cent think that they could find a ca­reer that they will find ful­fill­ing here,” she shared, not­ing, “I think this is very dis­heart­en­ing be­cause we should be build­ing a coun­try where our young peo­ple want to be here and want to con­tribute.”

She ar­gued that ad­dress­ing that sen­ti­ment re­quires more than iso­lat­ed projects or pol­i­cy an­nounce­ments.

“I think the Gov­ern­ment has high am­bi­tions. I think they have a lot of plans and projects and things they would like to achieve, but I don’t think it has come to­geth­er in a com­pre­hen­sive plan that says point A speaks to point B.”

Har­ris al­so said many cit­i­zens re­main un­clear about the coun­try’s long-term di­rec­tion adding, “I don’t think that the gov­ern­ment has a clear vi­sion that has been ar­tic­u­lat­ed to cit­i­zens that peo­ple could buy in­to and we could all say, ‘This is all hands on deck.’”

In­stead, she be­lieves the coun­try has be­come over­ly fo­cused on po­lit­i­cal bat­tles at the ex­pense of long-term de­vel­op­ment.

“I think right now we are trapped in a bad equi­lib­ri­um where we are so fo­cused on pol­i­tics and scor­ing points that we’re not re­al­ly fo­cus­ing on pol­i­cy and what is in the best in­ter­est of the coun­try.”

Man­u­fac­tur­ing growth cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties

Sim­i­lar themes emerged from pri­vate-sec­tor rep­re­sen­ta­tives at the fo­rum.

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) Emile Ramkissoon said that de­spite lay­offs in some sec­tors, young peo­ple should not over­look op­por­tu­ni­ties be­ing cre­at­ed else­where in the econ­o­my.

“Com­ing out of this fo­rum, I think the youths do have a fu­ture,” Ramkissoon said, adding, “We can­not look at the job loss­es in cer­tain sec­tors. Yes, we are look­ing at the job loss­es in the Cepep and the en­er­gy sec­tor.”

In­stead, he point­ed to man­u­fac­tur­ing as one area with strong growth po­ten­tial.

“The man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor has so much po­ten­tial. We saw 11.6 per cent growth up to June 2026, and I project that there’s go­ing to be fur­ther growth.”

Ramkissoon said on­go­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the TTMA and gov­ern­ment min­istries, trade mis­sions and ini­tia­tives such as the Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion are aimed at ex­pand­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cal busi­ness­es and work­ers.

He al­so urged young peo­ple to em­brace Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence and oth­er emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies along­side tra­di­tion­al pro­fes­sion­al qual­i­fi­ca­tions.

“The youths need to look at AI first­ly and pair that with their cur­rent pro­grammes,” Ramkissoon said, adding that op­por­tu­ni­ties ex­tend be­yond tra­di­tion­al man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs and in­clude en­gi­neer­ing, stan­dards de­vel­op­ment, in­no­va­tion and re­search, all of which will be need­ed to sup­port the sec­tor’s con­tin­ued ex­pan­sion.

Align­ing ed­u­ca­tion with fu­ture in­dus­tries

Of­fer­ing a sim­i­lar per­spec­tive was Vinai Char­ran, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Char­ran’s Book­store, who said some of the chal­lenges fac­ing job seek­ers stem from pur­su­ing ca­reers in in­dus­tries that are no longer grow­ing.

“I think the per­sons that are not find­ing jobs may be in in­dus­tries that are shrink­ing,” Char­ran said as he urged stu­dents to pay clos­er at­ten­tion to trends in the labour mar­ket and choose fields that are like­ly to re­main rel­e­vant in the com­ing years.

“The youths need to be mind­ful of what’s hap­pen­ing in the econ­o­my and ad­just ac­cord­ing­ly, so go in­to a field of study that is go­ing to have a fu­ture in five years’ time when they grad­u­ate.”

Char­ran iden­ti­fied health­care as one area where de­mand re­mains strong for nurs­es for in­stance, and point­ed to op­por­tu­ni­ties linked to ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and the de­vel­op­ment of da­ta-dri­ven in­dus­tries.

While wel­com­ing plans to strength­en vo­ca­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion, he ar­gued that schools should place greater em­pha­sis on AI-re­lat­ed com­pe­ten­cies.

“I think what they should be do­ing is fo­cus­ing more on teach­ing AI skills in schools, ac­tu­al­ly teach­ing stu­dents how to use AI and bet­ter man­age AI, rather than sim­ply us­ing it as a tool to search.”