Editorial | The HEART of skills

It is a long-standing complaint that Jamaica has a scarcity of skilled or certified trades people, such as carpenters, masons and plumbers.

Even if they are good at the basics, they often fall short on the finer, technical elements of the jobs or in doing the mathematical calculations necessary in modern constructions.

The anecdotal evidence suggests that these weaknesses are increasingly evident in western Jamaica where people have been repairing and rebuilding their homes and other facilities, after the devastation left by Hurricane Melissa last October. The Category-5 storm damaged or destroyed over 130,000 buildings, including critical infrastructure, such as schools, hospitals, drains and bridges. The cost of the destruction was estimated at US$8.6 billion.

If indeed western Jamaica is already feeling the pinch of a shortage of skills, that problem is likely to be greatly compounded as Jamaica enters the major post-hurricane reconstruction phase, with an emphasis, the government says, of building with the resilience required to face the climate crisis. This in some instances may require relocating entire communities further inland. Indeed, Prime Minister Andrew Holness has raised the prospect of building a new city in the island’s southwest.

This is the backdrop against which The Gleaner urges, and looks forward to, a broader and deeper conversation of the projected skills requirement for the post-Hurricane Melissa reconstruction and further and better particulars on the numbers for the HEART/NSTA Trust in the government’s estimate of income and expenditure for the 2026/27 fiscal year, which begins on April 1.

KEY ROLE

HEART is the government’s skills and vocational training agency. It therefore has a key role in preparing young Jamaicans with technical and vocational skills, often filling critical gaps left by the island’s formal education system. That job is likely to be amplified in the current situation.

In that regard, there are two areas for which additional clarity is sought from the agency based on the public bodies document: its profit and loss position of recent years, and the number of students it proposes to train.

HEART’s last published audited account is for 2022/23, when it reported a surplus of J$937.2 million. That was the year before Prime Minister Andrew Holness announced the removal of tuition fees for people who enrolled in HEART courses. In some cases, students would receive other subventions.

“This will allow for access to vocational training for all Jamaicans, regardless of economic status,” Dr Holness said in the 2023/24 budget debate. “This will be a game-changer for poor, under-served youth, who see fees as an obstacle to formal training.”

For that fiscal year (2023/24) the government projected a surplus at the agency of J$315.7 million. However, based on the public bodies report for 2025/26 the audited outturn was a deficit of J$592 million. The latest public document said HEART posted a deficit of J$2.8 billion in 2024/25, but projects the loss to improve to J$1.3 billion in the financial year that is now ending. The expectation is that it will return a surplus of J$1 billion in the coming fiscal year.

VARY STEEPLY

What is curious about the losses for the previous years is how steeply they vary from projections, and in some instances, there’s lack of consistency in the projected surplus for a given year in subsequent public bodies reports.

There is, also, the implication of these numbers for HEART’s capacity to train, or whether they suggest deliberate shift in strategies, including steering more of the agency’s hands-on efforts to other institutions. If that is the case, the question then is about the efficacy of the strategy.

Indeed, in the 2026/27 fiscal year, the agency expects to enrol 108,342 trainees, a 28 per cent jump from the previous year. However, the 2026 enrolment will be over 14,000, or 12 per cent fewer students than in 2024/25. Further, the projected certification of 41,070 trainees will be below the projected 48,337 of 2025/26 and 18 per cent (over 9,000) fewer than for 2024/25. Actual outcomes, though, are not known.

Notably, HEART’s personnel and administration costs, based on the current projections, have fallen by 18 per cent over three years, to J$11 billion in 2026/27. Additionally, its training costs, including subventions to students, is also declining – projected to be down five per cent to J$5.8 billion, between 2024/25 and 2026/27.

There is also the question of whether HEART is getting the skills mix right in its training programmes. Up-to-date figures of enrolment are not available, but over half of its trainees go into services and tourism. Perhaps 15 per cent seek ICT skills. Those who sign up for construction-related skills tend to be in single digits.

All of these issues need to be part of the conversation.