How did the ‘300 workers a year’ figure come about?
‘300 WORKERS each year coming into Guernsey for 30 years’ sounds very much like a calculation made on the back of a fag packet.
To help us mere mortals understand how this calculation has been made, could somebody please answer the following questions:
1. Will these 300 workers fill vacancies in jobs which already exist but are unfilled, or will the vacancies be in new jobs that will directly enrich, either socially or economically, the lives of everybody in Guernsey?
2. Are the 300 needed because each year there are too few pupils leaving school and entering the job market to fill the vacancies?
3. Or is it because too many pupils entering the job market are unsuited to the jobs which are not unfilled?
4. If so, which sector(s) of the economy is being affected by the dearth of competent candidates and might this be rectifiable by our schools providing education which is more suited to the local economy?
4. Or is it because adequate numbers of appropriately skilled students are produced each year but significant numbers choose to leave the island for jobs in the UK?
5. If so, why do they choose to leave?
Answers to these questions should help us to understand why Guernsey needs to import 300 new workers each year when it might be possible to ameliorate that number by more targeted education and by making life in Guernsey more acceptable to young people who are currently leaving the island.
TONY LEE