THE TIME has come for the system of paying out unemployment benefits to be revisted.
Speaking at a training seminar for retrenched workers at the National Union of Public Workers (NUPW) Training Academy yesterday at the union’s Horatio Cooke Auditorium in Dalkeith, St Michael, president of the Small Business Association (SBA), Dalton Medford, said organisations like the NUPW needed to agitate for a name change.
“It should be renamed training assistance, something to get people back on their feet. I believe that the word unemployment benefit sends the wrong signal to people, and they go home and wait for six months.
“If this money can be used as working capital, some kinda money to get you up and going, and get your mind as soon as possible thinking about getting back into a work environment, getting back into working for yourself,” he suggested, adding that if severance payments and unemployment benefits were used wisely, it could put unemployed people back on their feet.
