Labour Ministry To Enhance Labour Systems

The Ministry of Labour and Social Security will be undertaking a project to enhance the national Labour Market Information System (LMIS) and the Electronic Labour Exchange (ELE) system.

This is to ensure that data provided under these platforms are relevant to the rapidly changing labour market.

The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry, Collette Roberts-Risden, says the project is now at the procurement stage and the contract is to be signed shortly for work to begin.

“By the end of this financial year, those enhancements should be completed,” she noted.

Mrs. Roberts-Risden explained that the enhanced system will assist in alleviating the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 has disrupted the labor market, slowed economic growth and has negatively impacted the lives of many persons, particularly those who have lost their jobs.

“Efforts have been made to ensure that the LMIS remains relevant and user friendly. We are moving to again, later this year, further enhance our LMIS and our ELE system to ensure that it remains relevant and satisfies the changing demands,” she informed.

Last year, the Ministry launched the LMIS mobile application. It can be downloaded from the Google Play Store and AppleiOS for use on multiple mobile devices, such as cellphones, tablets and laptops.

“We can’t stay static and we must improve. There will be further enhancements conducted to the app, as well as to our website to make it more user-friendly as well as to provide more data analytics for those persons who visit the site. This will assist us in turning out comprehensive and accurate data on what is happening in the labour market,” she explained.

An additional feature, she said, will be the introduction of a rating system on the LMIS for skilled workers.

“For skilled persons –the mason, the plumber, the carpenter –we will be having something for them on the website where an employer can look at the ratings of the person’s work. So, we will be assisting in marketing those persons’ skills,” she added.

CVM LIVE understands that between June and July of this year, approximately 10,000 jobseekers were registered on the LMIS.

The LMIS is a job-matching facility, as well as a database of qualitative and quantitative information collected from a number of labour market information producers.

The LMIS is comprised of three major components – the electronic labour exchange (ELE), the labour market Intelligence (LMI) and the skills bank.