By Howard Campbell, Gleaner WriterTHIRTY YEARS ago, in his maiden budget speech as Leader of the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), Edward Seaga proposed the establishment of a national programme that would prepare youths, who were not equipped for tertiary education, for employment.
That proposal, he said, was overlooked by Government and it was not until two years after the JLP came to power in 1980 that Mr. Seaga, as Prime Minister, instituted the Human Employment And Resource Training (HEART) programme.
Speaking with The Sunday Gleaner last month, he described HEART as "one of the most successful programmes of our administration".
Mr. Seaga said he first conceived plans for a national training programme in the 1950s while doing sociological research across Jamaica. He stressed that he had become frustrated with the apprentice system which was still an unofficial training ground for school-leavers in the 1970s. For decades it was the norm for parents to send their sons to learn a trade, most times carpentry or mechanics, a practice Mr. Seaga believes had limited scope.
HEART was launched in November 1982 with the passage of the HEART Act in Parliament. Funding for the new initiative would be driven by a three per cent levy on payrolls with qualification for prospective students being a minimum two passes at the General Certificate of Education Exami-nation (GCE) level.
The first academies were established at Stony Hill and Hope Road in 1984. The former provided training for persons eyeing careers in the commercial field while the Hope Road school prepared budding cosmetologists.
DOWNFALL OF THE
YOUTH CAMPS
By the time the JLP was defeated by the People's National Party (PNP) in national polls in February 1989, four other HEART schools had been established. These were the Runaway Bay academy which trained students for a career in the hotel industry; Ebony Park which specialised in agriculture; Portmore (building and construction); and Garmex (apparel).
Each had an average of 3,000 students.
"The concept then was not to do short-term training which would not allow the students to have sufficient training to get a job, that was the downfall of the youth camps which were introduced by the PNP in the late 1950s," said Mr. Seaga. "The HEART programme was designed to give one full year of training in a skill as well as the backup (of) academics, and because they were boarding institutions they also were able to impose a certain amount of discipline and regimentation for attitude development and as a result they became very much in demand."
The first batch of HEART academies prepared students for sectors where Government believed the economy was lagging, including construction, agriculture and business administration. The latter targeted mainly females, helping them to develop clerical skills and also training them in computer operations.
According to Mr. Seaga, the HEART business operations programme was so successful that graduates filled many of the vacancies at Montego Bay's Freeport which came on stream in the mid-1980s. The Runaway Bay academy, he pointed out, was just as prolific.
"Hotel training was perhaps the most successful of all of them. Hotels were recruiting students sometimes before they graduated," he said. Had the JLP won the 1989 General Election, Mr. Seaga said a seventh HEART academy, geared at security services, would have been established at Cobbla in Manchester.
SMALL BUSINESS VENTURES
Although the JLP was unable to establish more academies, HEART's reach extended to small business ventures like the short-lived Solidarity Programme in which persons were given small loans to start businesses.
HEART has expanded under the PNP since it became Government in 1989. There are four more schools and several training programmes such as the School Leavers Opportunities Training programmes. Through its association with the National Training Agency (NTA), HEART has also helped develop 16 vocational centres across the country.
Mr. Seaga, who has kept in touch with the HEART programme, said he is pleased with the organisation's progress.
"The last 15 years has moved in other directions, not strictly the way it was originally mapped out, but it's justifiable in terms of the needs of the economy," he said.
