Jamaica Building Capacity for Tourism Resilience Through Education and Training  

 

• Developing human resource capacity through education and training, is one way in which Jamaica is building resilience in tourism, says Minister without Portfolio in the Office of the Prime Minister, Hon. Floyd Green.
• The Minister, who was participating in a panel discussion as part of the inaugural Global Tourism Resilience Conference, cited the work being done by the HEART NSTA Trust, in equipping persons in various skills areas to serve the sector. He said that the Ministry of Tourism recognised “very early” the importance of building human resource skills in the sector and has been providing training and certification at various levels including in the communities.
• “We started the Jamaica Centre of Tourism Innovation (JCTI) to focus a lot on the workforce that we already have and ensuring that they have the certification because a lot of them already have the experience,” he noted.
• The JCTI programme is also being implemented in various high schools across the island. Minister Green noted that while community tourism evolves organically, those involved in this aspect of the sector still require training and certification to build capacity.
• Although the tourism industry has been recovering strongly from the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been faced with a shortage of trained workers.  As such the tourism ministry is seeking to resolve the talent issue with the creation of various training programmes to fill current and anticipated training gaps in the industry.

(Source: JIS)