The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business

Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Government is planning to demolish the Clarence A. Bain Building and replace it with a “flagship one-stop shop centre” for assisting employment seekers, in a bid to improve its 2 per cent job placement success rate.

The plan is part of a $50 million initiative, funded with matching 50/50 contributions by the Government and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), to boost workforce productivity and economic output by improving skills levels among young Bahamians.

The Clarence A. Bain Building, a long-time government property and landmark on Thompson Boulevard, has been well-known to Bahamians and residents as the location for diver and vehicle licensing, and inspection.

It has also been home to the Department of Labour, but this agency has now moved to the former City Markets building on Rosetta Street, while the Road Traffic Department has relocated to the Thomas A. Robinson stadium.

An IDB document, obtained by Tribune Business, reveals that the Clarence A. Bain Building is unsuitable for the Department of Labour’s public employment exchange because it has “been declared unfit to operate in”.

Its demolition, and replacement, is intended to provide better support infrastructure to assist unemployed Bahamians find work and “engage” better with employers.

“Improvements in software, hardware and infrastructure will help to provide targeted quality services to the unemployed (with special emphasis on youth services), and more closely engage with employers within a 21st century setting, promoting a better placement of the job seekers and a better match with employers,” the IDB document.

“Currently, the Department of Labour is promoting the concept of one-stop-shops, where its clients receive centralised information about the array of services available to improve their prospects of employment.”

As a result, the $50 million project is allocating some $11.8 million to finance the Clarence A. Bain building’s demolition, and its replacement with a model ‘one-stop-shop’ employment exchange intended to become the Bahamian national standard.

“This component will finance the construction of a 43,500 square foot area of a new building to house the Department of Labour and the country’s ‘flagship’ one-stop-shop centre that will serve as the national standard for other islands’ one-stop-shops,” the IDB said, “and to provide a new, modernised... environment best suited to the needs of job seekers.

“The project contemplates the demolition of the Clearance A. Bain Building, and builds a new facility on site - which is government owned land. There will be no acquisition of land.

“The original infrastructure, built in 1974 has been declared unfit to operate in, as the needs of the public employment service have outgrown it, and its ability to service its clients.

“Moreover, the current building does not fit the minimum criteria necessary to install and develop a one-stop-shop centre that represents a major step forward towards a modern job placement system.”

Improvement is badly needed, with Tribune Business having previously revealed that the Department of Labour’s existing public employment service places just 2 per cent of registered persons with jobs.

This also undermines the concept of Bahamian society as a meritocracy, the IDB report adds, because job opportunities tend to go to “the well connected” as opposed to the best qualified and suited for the post - also undermining labour force productivity.

The Department of Labour “has limited capacity - in terms of infrastructure, co-ordination with the private sector, and qualified personnel - to systematically capture vacancies and be able to respond to the demands of employers by matching these vacancies to the pool of available workers.

“The Department of Labour currently resides in a building that is not consistent with the 21st century public employment services (PES) environment that it envisions, whereby the unemployed can have access to high quality and well-targeted services that can help them find formal and productive job opportunities,” the IDB said.

“This reduces the possibilities of employers to find the right talent and reinforces inequality of opportunities for workers who are obliged to search through their networks of contacts.

“In this scenario, job opportunities do not necessarily go to the better prepared or to those individuals who represent a better match with the vacancy, but rather to the well connected, lowering the quality of the worker-jobs matches and, with it, labour productivity.”

The Department of Labour facility featured vacancies from just 12 per cent of listed businesses, with just 2 per cent of registered job seekers placed in a post, figures that were “well below international best practices”.

“The Bahamas’ placement rate of 2 per cent compares to the Latin American and Caribbean regional average of 27.1 per cent, corresponding to the average of 2013 figures for Honduras, Jamaica, Peru, the Bahamas, Mexico, Brazil, Nicaragua, Barbados, Guatemala, Guyana, and Ecuador,” the IDB said.

“In the Caribbean, some comparator figures are 11 per cent for Jamaica and 25.7 per cent for Barbados.”