Equal opportunities in government sought

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More Aboriginal people in the public service is the goal, and the first step toward achieving that goal was a workshop held in Merritt to promote partnership between first peoples and the provincial government. The Partners in Equal Opportunities Workshop, organized by the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology (NVIT), brought a number of government MLA's to the Memorial Arena. Included was Sue Hammell, minister responsible for the public service. Discussions were held to ensure that representatives from Aboriginal organizations had access to the various ministries to deal with employment equity issues.

The conference followed on the heels of a job fair held at NVIT last month that was opened by Hammell and Yale-Lillooet MLA Harry Lali at which the government's Equal Opportunity Secretariat was encouraging graduates to consider public service as a career.

"There's clearly a lot of activity around this issue in this corner of the province," Hammell said in her opening address. "This is the Aboriginal community being right up front and dealing with this important issue."

The Equal Opportunity Secretariat was formed to try and balance employment equity problems in the public service after it was found that the Aboriginal, visible minority and persons with disabilities communities were under-represented in government offices. Its aim is to try and balance the numbers of those groups with their presence in the provincial population, and to ensure that people are not denied employment or advancement for any reasons outside of their ability to do the job.

At present, the public sector does not reflect the makeup of the province at all, Hammell noted, which is one thing the secretariat aims to change.

A community advisory committee made up of representatives from under-represented groups has been formed to work within their own communities, and Hammell urged local leaders to come up with possible solutions along with those people.

"I hope you can come back to the secretariat with some actual things we can do," she said. "Talk is cheap. We've talked about this issue before, and we did nothing about it. We need concrete actions that we can take."

There are 400,000 jobs in the public sector, she pointed out, and many of those should be available to Aboriginal people if they qualify for them. That doesn't mean hiring quotas, however. Jobs will only be given to the most qualified applicants, she affirmed. The secretariat is looking to work with Aboriginal groups to try and help people gain the qualifications they need to work in government service, as well as getting word of those jobs out to the communities.

"Since the creation of the Equal Opportunity Secretariat, the hiring of Aboriginal people into the auxiliary ranks (temporary government work) has gone up by 78 per cent," Hammell said, pointing out that the Aboriginal community in British Columbia has about 50 per cent of its population under 19 years of age. "There's a whole bunch of us baby boomers on our way out, so the opportunities will open up for those young people."