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Guerrero: WIA seeks to bolster local workforce
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Posted on Aug 06 2008
Responding to the federal cap on the number of foreigners permitted to work in the CNMI, the Workforce Investment Agency—the local employment education and training service—is striving to bolster the Commonwealth’s pool of skilled workers through a variety of training programs, executive director Edith Deleon Guerrero said in a speech before the Saipan Chamber of Commerce Wednesday.
Recently enacted legislation has capped the number of foreign workers in the CNMI at 22,000, a limitation that has alarmed many business leaders dependant on foreign labor. However, Guerrero in her speech noted a host of training initiatives WIA and its partners have initiated that could help improve the local workforce in response to the cap.
“WIA and its primary training partner agencies such as” the Northern Mariana College, the Public School System, and the local Department of Labor “recognize the importance and urgency to be responsive in building a talented and skillful CNMI workforce that meets the needs of existing and future businesses within the CNMI,” Guerrero said.
For example, Guerrero noted WIA’s involvement in programs to train people as nurses, medical billing and coding staff, boat captains and to fill several other critical positions.
WIA is also collaborating with the newly established Marianas Trades Institute in an effort to support the training of local people in carpentry, electrical work and plumbing, she added, along with its efforts to support programs like Job Corps, which provides work related training in several fields.
In addition, WIA is aiming to improve the overall quality of the CNMI’s workforce, she added, by addressing any deficiencies. This is critical, she noted, because a recent survey of Fortune 500 companies found most look for a host of job training-related qualities in the employees they hire, such as work ethic, reading comprehension, oral communication skills and computer literacy.
