GOVERNMENT must do more to encourage youngsters to take up technical careers, it has been claimed.And Opposition MP Grant Gibbons warned that, unless better training facilities were provided, the island would be flooded with foreign workers.

Dr. Gibbons spoke out after Government confirmed that Bermudians hoping to work at a planned new resort in Southlands will be sent to Dubai for training by the prospective hotel’s operator, Jumeirah.

And he said the fact that Government wanted to strengthen ties with a training college in Barbados demonstrated that on-island training was being neglected. This year Government increased the budget for training programmes by just $3,000 on last year.

Dr. Gibbons also pointed out that 700 of 850 chefs currently working on the island were guest workers — and that little was being done to encourage Bermuda’s youngsters into the industry or provide on-island training for them.

“Statistics show that there are between 19,000 and 20,000 Bermudians employed in the technical trades — that’s 50 per cent of the workforce — and it’s irresponsible to provide inadequate training,” he said.

“The Bermuda College sends two to three times more students overseas than are trained on the island and that’s because of the inadequacy of training at the College.

“We’ve got 850 chefs working on the island and 700 of those are non-Bermudian. It begs the question, why can’t we build proper facilities for training them here?

“In the last few years only two or three students have been trained as chefs by the College and now Government is saying that Jumeirah should take them to Dubai.

“That’s basically a six-year process —three years of academic training followed by three years in an accredited kitchen. Young Bermudians would much rather do their training here at the College, in a Bermudian environment working with Bermudian hotels and restaurants.

“We have to do a much better job of providing training on the island, otherwise we are going to lose these young Bermudians. We need a proper technical education programme with space at the Bermuda College to develop technical training facilities.”

Dr. Gibbons (pictured) said that students in middle schools needed to be made aware at an earlier age of career options in trades in order for them to develop an interest in such fields — something that hadn’t been done since the closure of the Technical Institute in the mid-1970s.

“The Technical Institute was taking children from the age of 11 or 12 and they stayed until they were 16,” he said.

“One of the reasons it was successful was because it was getting children in at an early age. When the College opened, the Institute became the technical training department within the College but it didn’t take on students until they were 16.”

Dr. Gibbons said a unified training programme, starting in middle schools, needed to be developed.

His comments have been backed up by hospitality chiefs, who frequently complain about a lack of Bermudians willing to enter the industry.

Dr. Eugenie Simmons, head of technical training at Bermuda College, defended the College’s policy of sending students overseas, saying that many courses were being cut because of a lack of demand.

But she also acknowledged that more needed to be done to encourage youngsters into certain professions, saying that the trades are often looked down on as second-rate jobs.

“We haven’t put an equal value on technical training as we have on academic training,” she said.

“We didn’t get it right ten years ago or 20 years ago and the result is there’s now a reluctance to enter the technical trades.

“The entire community needs to talk about the value of a technical education. The Bermuda College and the National Training Board are now starting to work very closely together. We are looking at the obstacles and finding ways to overcome them.”

Gibbons issues plea to the Government