It may be surprising to some that basic competence is an issue in Greenland. My first experience of it was before moving to Greenland, when I was offered a job. I was assigned a contact person from my new employer to advise on all aspects of the employment process. She told me I needed a work permit. Having investigated the relevant website, I learned that my new employer needed to complete a form on my behalf to send to the Immigration Service. I passed on this information to my contact and received no response. Some days later I emailed again and received the following:
“It’s out of my Competences to be helpful with application to the Immigration Service.”
The finality left me feeling I had unwittingly walked into a glass door. There was no redirection to someone more knowledgable or helpful. A simple line was drawn under the matter.
Greenland is a small place with limited resources of qualified people in any profession you might choose to name. For example, the last private physiotherapist left Nuuk for Denmark some months ago, leaving a complete void in this particular profession for any cases not ‘serious’ enough to be assigned one through the hospital. In any profession, you will find that getting, and particularly keeping, competent staff is a real struggle. I say competent. Not good. Just competent.
Why? Like many issues, it boils down to the very poor standard of education. For example, one simply can’t have legislation drawn up by people who don’t have a legal qualification, though it has been seriously suggested. You can’t treat patients if you haven’t studied medicine. So many professional people are sourced from abroad by necessity, and thus mainly from Denmark. So it will continue until there is a critical mass of qualified Greenlanders…which will take a good long while. Of the almost 2000 who start some form of education each year – mostly school children – 50% drop out. And an average of only around 170 finish graduate level studies each year (Greenland in Figures, 2017). Nonetheless, underqualified Greenlanders are, in some cases, employed preferentially over qualified non-Greenlandic candidates. Though positive discrimination has its place, where it results in poor-quality leadership in particular, the results don’t help anyone.
There are also problems with having foreign professionals working in positions that require special qualifications. Of course, some who migrate to Greenland are motivated and good at their jobs. And some come with the intention of making a positive difference to Greenlandic society. But many of those become demoralised when they discover that to make that difference requires broad-reaching changes far beyond their personal abilities to achieve. Also, being remote and expensive to travel to and from, and offering limited salaries, it is difficult to attract high-quality candidates. In some cases, it’s difficult to attract anyone at all to apply. Finally, there are also people who come to Greenland because they are simply not good enough to get a job anywhere else.
Ambition, hope, change. There are many things worth striving for. But right now, building and maintaining basic competence tops the list.
