The Tribune

Your Say

By ROCHELLE DEAN

THE Bahamas is experiencing the impact of a global recession that has stagnated the growth of the country’s economy. While this state of affairs may lead many to fear, become angry or simply feel as if they are in a debilitated state, it is important for the Bahamas to make sensible decisions and good use of its time while it seeks to find ways to sustain, promote and implement sound economic policies toward sustainable development.

The unemployment rate in the Bahamas is 16 per cent and while the government has promoted jobs skill readiness opportunities and initiatives that promote employment like its 52-week job programme, the country has also promoted entrepreneurship.

While entrepreneurship is a good thing, this form of sustainability must be fully defined. It’s the responsibility of the government to foster proper opportunities to promote job readiness and entrepreneurship. This is the key to also encouraging proper employment practices. In an era of ongoing unemployment, it’s imperative that the country’s young people recognise the value and importance of work. Employment is a means to learn basic skills that will be applied to entrepreneurship.

The country continues to have a low productivity rate due to informality. The Bahamas has seen very little movement and a struggling labour market. Many nationals actively partake in the informal economy but the country struggles with transitioning from the informal to the formal.

The Bahamas continues to encourage self employment of its nationals who have no work ethic or understanding of customer services or other qualities that need to be applied to successful entrepreneurship. The country continues to fuel the informal economy at the expense of the formal.

Employment is a fundamental tool that promotes human dignity and wellbeing of the community. It is also the starting point of becoming financially successful, a business owner or an entrepreneur. It is also the means by which workers can become more qualified for further advancement.

What happens when a country has failed because of lack of transparency? The Bahamas has failed because we have created a group of individuals who grow the informal economy and continue to feed that one area of economic sustainability.

The Bahamas has not grown its economy: it has created a group of individuals who are not entrepreneurs but simply self-employed individuals with no understanding of proper work practices and therefore the country cannot grow.

The Bahamas must encourage its nationals to work, learn proper work practices and become knowledgeable in the barriers to formality as well as the benefits and obstacles to informality as an individual and as a society at large. The government must promote effective employees who can learn to become employers, which will give them the skills and tools to become self employed and transition into entrepreneurship.

The formal and informal economies work together to allow the people to grow along with the gross domestic product. The ultimate goal is that as a country thrives, so do its people. The Bahamas must begin to see the importance of employment which will encourage both tangible and intangible effects for the country.

For the future it is important that Bahamians are encouraged to see the value and importance of work skills and taking advantage of the resources and opportunities for skills-based advancement that are available to them.

In a downturn, employment becomes vital along with the sharpening of personal development and education opportunities.

The Bahamas must begin to reset its understanding of its economic position and promote proper practices of its nationals as individuals who promote and take responsibility for their own economic activity. That will then translate into taking control of the country’s economic sustainability.

Bahamians must seek to become employable, hard working individuals who can then transition into other areas of sustainable development. The alleviation of poverty begins with gaining proper work ethics and employment.

Rochelle R Dean is a Bahamian scholar, research fellow and peer-reviewer and a theory writer of economics presently completing a Bachelors of Science dual degree in economics and public administration with Liberty University, Lynchburg, Virginia.