Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands – Following the release of the findings of a report produced by the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Employment (IMCE), the Ministry of Education is producing a series of short videos which explain different parts of the “Review and Employment Policy and Strategy in the Cayman Islands” document in laymen’s terms.

The videos, which are 90 seconds to two minutes long, feature Dr. Tasha Ebanks Garcia, Deputy Chief Officer for Employment, Training, Tertiary Education Strategy & Public Library Services in the Ministry. The first, which is posted on CIGTV and the Ministry of Education’s Facebook page, clarified the 98 percent statistic that has been making headlines in the community.

“Unfortunately, it has been erroneously reported that 98 percent of the clients registered with the National Workforce Development Agency (NWDA) are not work ready; this simply is not true,” said Dr. Ebanks Garcia. “The NWDA has over 1000 registered jobseekers and a small group of 139 who self-identify as needing support were assessed and it was 98 per cent of that 139 who were identified as not being work ready due to having multiple barriers to employment. Those barriers include skills deficits, lack of experience, the challenge of balancing family needs with employment responsibilities and soft skills deficits.”

Ebanks Garcia says she hopes that the videos will help raise awareness of the issues identified through the IMCE report and educate the public as to government’s response to the findings.

“We didn’t commission a report just because we can, and in fact this is the first of its kind,” she said. “We needed empirical data to help us prioritise and plan new initiatives to deal with the challenges that the unemployed in our community are facing. What we’re finding is that some of the barriers to employment have changed over the years as the social and economic issues of the country have evolved, and so it was necessary to better understand what we’re up against in 2016 as opposed to the problems we had a decade ago.”

The video series will explore barriers to employment, ask the question, “Are Caymanians lacking skills?” and look at the topic of attitude. The videos can be found on the Ministry’s Facebook page and the Government YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbVPlvvgmGs and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ-bziA1C98.