Manpower planning, training and employment

Post-project PES (dated 11/83) covers the period 8/78-10/82 and is based on an attached special evaluation (XD-AAP-329-A). Although the project marginally improved GOJ manpower planning and trained some GOJ personnel in manpower analysis and vocational curriculum development, the manpower selection, training, and placement system is now less effective than before the project. Most outputs were either not achieved, deficient, or ineffective: the labor supply survey produced no useful data and the labor demand survey was inaccurate; manpower projections were prepared, but were only gross estimates due to the lack of survey data and the delayed decadal census; although a Jamaican Employment Service (JES) labor market information system was created and staff were trained in data collection, due to limited market coverage the data proved useless; an ineffective National Planning Agency coordinating committee was set up; 3 of 12 planned vocational guidance booklets were completed, but without the complete set they too were useless; a completed vocational manual using U.S. terminology proved irrelevant for Jamaican use; while the work sample proficiency tests developed were of high-quality, training curricula were only partially completed. Overall, the project was hampered by inadequate planning, management, and implementation; targets were overly amibitious, the schedule unrealistic, methodologies too sophisticated, components poorly articulated, and resources inadequate and badly managed (A.I.D. funds were delayed and 10% were unspent, GOJ funding and staffing were lower than planned). GOJ social and economic problems and changes also seriously affected the project (e.g., JES resource and staff reductions, closure of the industrial training centers). Jamaican staff should have received more early training to allow them to better use TA; an independent management agent could have helped coordinate the many components; an ongoing linkage with a U.S. university for manpower data analysis would have been better than using individual consultants; and scheduled evaluations would have allowed correction or termination of troubled components.