When Government rolls out its National First Jobs Programme, the matter of internships and giving people, particularly students and young people, exposure and opportunities to gain a practical side to their education, will be high on its agenda.
This was emphasised on Wednesday by Minister of Labour and Social Partnership Relations, Colin Jordan as he visited and toured Hyuna, a tech company, located at Balmoral Gap, Hastings, Christ Church.
Acknowledging that it would provide more than what was theoretically done in a learning institution, Minister Jordan said: “As the national programme is put into effect, the matter of job attachment is one that we want to develop. Hyuna is already [doing so] but I would wish to ask other businesses to consider engaging with the young people, those who do not yet have a programme. There are a lot of bright young people out there who want to contribute and in many cases are frustrated because they just cannot get their foot in the door.
“And, we have seen here [at Hyuna] a couple of people who actually joined the company through that internship programme.”
As he commended Hyuna, Mr. Jordan noted the company was either at the cutting edge or positioning itself to be at the cutting edge in terms of delivering technological solutions to the world. And, with reference to Barbados he stressed: “The world is available for us and technology has really democratized access to all kinds of solutions.”
Chief Financial Officer at Hyuna, Gregory Webster, in welcoming the Labour Minister and his team, acknowledged that since 2012, Hyuna had been positioning itself to be one of the leading companies here and on the forefront of developing Barbados and the talent it possessed.
Elaborating further, Mr. Webster said: “With regards to that, one of our big initiatives, in the last two or three years, has been to work with the University of the West Indies (UWI) to implement several programmes.
Whether we are cooperating under the curriculum to improve the type of talent that is coming out of the university, using new languages, new code or providing an internship programme to help select the best talent that the university has [and] providing jobs for that talent.
We are in our third year and the relationship is going well. We are expanding that to hopefully continue to work with UWI Jamaica and Trinidad as well. So, we are going to continue to build on that because we see a lot of potential and the company is invested here in Barbados.”
Hyuna International Ltd. is a digital multimedia service platform offering content that includes movies, music, e-Books, audiobooks and video games. It employs 116 persons, several of whom are young Barbadians.