A combined 44 participants completing two special post-Irma courses offered by the White Yellow Cross Care Foundation (WYCCF) primarily to address the sudden widespread loss of employment and/or income (see related story) is good news first and foremost to those concerned and their loved ones. The money came from 7 million euros in emergency funding made available by the Netherlands for non-governmental organisations. (NGOs) to provide relief assistance.
The latter once again dispels claims of not having received anything yet from the 550 million euros the Dutch Government originally pledged to help St. Maarten deal with the impact of the strongest Atlantic hurricane on record. In this case local partners included Social Services, National Institute for Professional Advancement, Milton Peters College-SVOBE and St. Maarten Medical Center.
The fact that both the construction assistant and care assistant courses could make use of job-training opportunities at respectively WYCCF’s home repair programme for seniors and its own care institutions in addition to the hospital was obviously an important ingredient. Several in the first group had to “drop out” because they found work, as has 60 per cent of those in the second.
The number of graduates or even 160 initial applicants does not seem like a whole lot under the current dire circumstances, which could indicate that particularly in these two fields there is plenty of opportunity.
All this also sheds some new light on last week’s debate in Parliament regarding a relaxed employment permit policy for rebuilding projects. According to Minister of Labour Emil Lee, 76 permits have been given out up to June this year for construction workers and 37 for medical personnel, the two biggest categories except for adult entertainers (145).
The National Alliance (NA) said afterwards that it remained worried and suspects the just 121 persons registered as jobless are merely the tip of the iceberg. That is probably true in general, but in construction there may very well be significantly more work than capable hands to do it in a timely manner.
