The local Board of Industrial Training (BIT), which falls under the administrative jurisdiction of the Ministry of Labour, recently provided a national briefing on its various training activities, including its execution of training undertakings that impacted one thousand four hundred and ninety trainees (1,490) in 2024. At the Ministry’s recent media briefing, subject Minister Joseph Hamilton disclosed that since 2020, the BIT has delivered training to 12,765 persons at an overall cost of $169 million. A total of 1,490 persons were trained last year.
During his media briefing, the Labour Minister reportedly drew particular attention to the fact that of the 12,765 persons trained countrywide by the BIT 7,688 were women, noting that there had been an increase in the number of women now venturing into traditionally male-dominated disciplines. Contextually, the Labour Minister pointed to the fact that the orientation of the BIT’s training regimen sought to challenge entrenched societal ‘templates’ associated with gender roles in the wider national labour force.
“An important aspect of these statistics is the fact that we have been able to encourage hundreds of women to participate in what we call hard-skills programmes. Across the country, we have seen women joining training areas they were excluded from for decades,” Hamilton explained. The Minister said that the existing training regime sought to challenge societal perceptions regarding gender roles in employment.
