SPEECH - LAUNCH OF MAURITIUS CIRCULAR MIGRATION DATABASE

It gives me great pleasure to be here today and to be associated with the launching of the Mauritius Circular Migration Database. This database comes at an opportune time as the Government is promoting circular migration as a strategy to achieve development benefits. Mauritius became a member of the International Organisation for Migration in 2006 and since then IOM has been assisting Mauritius in finding employment opportunities abroad for both Mauritian and Rodriguans interested to work abroad.

Ladies and gentlemen, you must have heard of the triple win scenario. Circular migration is indeed one of the areas where this triple win principle can be applied. With people going to work abroad, not only does the receiving country benefit from the labour and the skills of the worker, but the worker also wins in terms of experience and more interesting salary than in the home country. Moreover, the sending country benefits in terms of the skills acquired by the workers and the remittances of the latter which may be used either for the betterment of the standard of living of the family or for the setting up of enterprises in the home country.

Ladies and gentlemen, as you may be aware, my Ministry has been fully involved, together with the IOM, the Ministry of Finance and the NEF in the implementation of circular migration projects with Canada. Once IOM notified us of opportunities abroad, officers of my Ministry were responsible to prepare the press communiqué calling for applications, screen each and every application, shortlist the candidates, prepare the files for each candidate, carry the pre-selection interviews, make arrangements for medical examination and the final selection with the employers, among others. Officers of my Ministry were fully mobilized to handle such projects, which had to be treated with utmost urgency given the short delay in which the list of selected candidates had to be submitted to employers.

The process has worked very well so far and we have received very positive feedback from employers abroad. Now that we are aspiring to having even more collaboration from other countries and as a vigourous marketing of the Mauritian labour has been done in different international forums, we expect to have more offers in the near future. I am informed that there are indeed some new projects in the pipeline and the possibility of developing projects with other countries is being explored. We should therefore equip ourselves to be able to take advantage of these new opportunities.

We have to keep in mind that we are living in a very competitive world and any delay may cause us to lose interesting opportunities abroad. Mauritius is not the only country from where employers can find workers. More and more countries are opening up and providing training to their people to facilitate their placement in jobs abroad. Thus, it is in our interest that we make the best effort possible for Mauritius to keep its competitive advantage, which is its skilled, versatile, hard working and bilingual labour. Moreover, Mauritius should be seen on the international front as a country from where labour can be acquired within minimum time possible. The Philippines is one of the best examples where appropriate structures are in place to enable the smooth placement of people abroad, and where labour is readily available. We are very much inspired by the Philippines model and we are thus taking appropriate measures to have similar structures in place in Mauritius.

The MCMD therefore comes as a tool that will enable faster processing of overseas vacancies by alleviating and facilitating the whole selection process. The database will be a readily available pool of candidates from which the system will automatically generate the list of those registered candidates who meet the criteria of the employers. Not only will we save in terms of cost of advertisement, pre-selection, file creation, but also in terms of time. Such database exists in other countries and has been very helpful particularly in the context of circular migration.

My Ministry will continue to be involved in the circular migration projects by providing the services of its 13 Employment Information Centres around the island, where registration forms may be collected and returned. The EIC in Rodrigues has also been fully prepared for this exercise.

It is good to point out that there is also a number of private local recruitment agencies, duly licensed by my Ministry, to place Mauritians in employment abroad. In 2008, some 418 Mauritians were placed abroad through these agencies and in 2009 some 636 proceeded abroad with the assistance of these agencies. This shows the interest of our people to explore avenues and opportunities outside Mauritius.

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to seize this opportunity to thank the IOM and its officers for the assistance provided to the Government of Mauritius, not only financial but also in terms of expertise, for the setting up of this database in Mauritius. In the light of interest shown by Mauritians to take up employment abroad, I am sure that the response of the public to the database would be very positive.

Moreover, I am confident that 2010 will be a fruitful year, full of opportunities for our people.