Ministry to get ILO expertise in job data collection and management |26 June 2013

The Minister for Labour and Human Resource Development Idith Alexander said during Question Time in the National Assembly yesterday morning the ILO will provide technical help to improve her ministry’s Labour Market Information System (LMIS) and this is expected by the end of the year or early next year.

She reassured the Assembly that her ministry in collaboration with its partners, the ILO included, is stepping up its effort to ensure it reaches its aim to have in place an efficient, accurate and up to date information system.

She noted that among the different challenges her ministry is facing with regard to collecting information and statistics are the various formats in which information and statistics are received from different organisations, information is not being received on time which is every two weeks as stated by the labour ministry and not having enough qualified personnel to manage and analyse the statistics.

Minister Alexander gave these details in answer to a question tabled by elected member for Roche Caiman Joevana Charles but asked in her absence by elected member for Anse Etoile Melval Dugasse.
The question was if the Labour and Human Resource Development ministry had finished putting in place the LMIS.

Minister Alexander noted that the LMIS was developed by the Department for Information Communications Technology (DICT) in collaboration with the ILO and was put in place in July 2005 with the aim of  maintaining a labour information system which would be more accessible to different organizations, ministries and policy-makers.
She said her ministry has over the years continued to improve the system.

“A new Policy Planning and Research Unit which has among its aims to initiate and carry out research, collect and analyse statistics on activities relating to the labour market has already been set up,” added the minister.

But Minister Alexander noted that new measures have been put in place since the unit has been set up  and these include the way in which statistics are collected, categorised and shared.
The content and presentation of statistics has also been improved. There have also been certain amendments to the system to reflect new ways in which data from private employment agencies are collected and categorised.

The minister stressed on the importance for a country to have in place the necessary mechanisms to collect statistics which are essential to help government develop policies and strategies which reflect reality and remain up to date with any development on the employment market.

The system is also supposed to be linked to other government information systems in ministries and agencies such as the statistics bureau, immigration division, the Ministry of Education, private employment agencies, taxation division and others.

To ensure her ministry attain its aim of providing more accurate and timely information, the unit is focused on its responsibility to better manage and analyse information and statistics so as to continue addressing challenges on the labour market.

Minister Alexander said that at present the unit is working on different electronic systems and databases in order to transfer and feed in information to the LMIS.
She noted that to better carry out the process the staff of the unit are continuously receiving training and earlier this year one of them followed an employment information research system course conducted by the ILO.