By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

The Government must ensure there are a greater number of highly-skilled employees within the public sector, the Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation’s (BCCEC) chairman said yesterday.

 Gowon Bowe added that the private sector was calling on the Government to provide an efficient and effective public sector.

  He told Tribune Business: “When you step back, really what the private sector demands and wishes of government is an efficient and effective public sector. It means that we should be, in the public sector, strengthening the resources to get the right people in the right places, doing the right thing at the right time.”

  Khaalis Rolle, minister of state for investments, last week said there was a need for dramatic improvement in the number of highly skilled/technical workers in the public sector, with just 1 per cent of its 19,000 employees falling into thatcategory.

    “Based on those statistics  there appears to be a bloated workforce without the necessary skills and technical training, and that proves that there is going to be a huge amount of inefficiency and ineffectiveness,” said Mr Bowe.

   “I think we now have to focus our attention on ensuring that we have a much higher percentage of skilled and qualified personnel so that matters can be addressed in a  timely and effective manner. I  think that that theme came out with the labour panel discussion last week as well in terms of there being jobs available but not being filled by Bahamians.

“We also have the skills gap because we are turning out more of the unskilled labourers. We have to focus on where we can train our people to take advantage of some of these higher-skilled jobs. It doesn’t always mean the typical learning we have done. It may mean focusing our attention on those areas that require the skill sets, and those skills that need to be developed for them.

“We hope that the Government has the stomach and the wherewithal and the political will to right that by virtue of saying: ‘I can streamline my government functions by employing more highly skilled persons, reducing my workforce of less skilled labourers but, in the process, create new opportunities in the private sector for those persons’.”