NTA labour market ad vague and misleading

A newspaper advertisement is headed “National Training Agency Labour Market Information.” Half of the ad is an extraction of three graphs from the Energy Chamber’s The Energy Blueprint Magazine. The other half is broken down as follows: the major job categories within the energy sector; energy sector training providers; job opportunities in T&T energy sector; percentage of vacancies per subsector (pie chart).

The NTA has provided us with information which does not really tell us anything much. The major job categories are vague and insufficient and can apply to other sectors in the economy. As a graduating student and a potential job-seeker, I have found that the pie chart is also very vague. What is the population? The “percentages of vacancies in each subsector” chart does not add any usable knowledge to job-seekers.

To make things worse, the ad told us about job opportunities in the sector. We would like to know where those vacancies occur. Are they at our level as graduating students and first-time job-seekers or are they at a higher level? In which companies do these jobs actually exist? We would really like to know since my colleagues and I have been writing to companies in the energy sector and have all had negative or no replies.

So the ad is of no use to many of us and we think that it is misleading. Is the NTA wasting taxpayers’ money by doing this? Can this money not be used to train us as OJTs? Are the NTA chairman and board party to this travesty?
 

Samantha Campbell
Curepe