Chief Executive Officer of the Neal and Massy Group of Companies in Guyana Deo Persaud has called for increased spending on apprenticeship and post-secondary education to mitigate the effects of what he says is a serious shortage of skilled labour in Guyana.
Delivering the keynote address to the 2008 graduating class at the Government Technical Institute at the National Cultural Centre on Tuesday last, Persaud said that the continued growth of the Guyana economy and the country’s ability to attract overseas investment will depend, crucially, on the national capacity to provide a pool of skilled labour to respond to the needs of the various sectors and the labour requirements of overseas investors.
According to Persaud, the problem of a scarcity of skilled labour in Guyana “becomes a particularly acute dilemma as it threatens to stymie growth through foreign investment. A lack of dependable infrastructure, particularly in the energy sector, in combination with a lack of skilled workers has contributed significantly to the incapacity of the Guyana economy to properly absorb investment capital.”
Persaud told the GTI graduating class that finding skilled workers to fill important jobs was a priority concern for investors. “When you invest millions of dollars to expand operations for your company’s most successful production line, you want to be sure that you have the most highly skilled employees to operate the equipment,” Persaud said.
According to the business executive, recent international business surveys have identified skilled labour as one of the more important factors that influence investment decisions. “Site selection criteria will not allow corporations to make investments in countries in which sufficient skilled labour is not available.
The lack of available skilled labour can often become an overwhelming factor in a site location study if it is determined that the geographical region cannot support the recruitment of a work force with the requisite skills and knowledge-based requirements of the company. In simple terms, this means that the lack of skilled trade workers such as carpenters, electricians, mechanics, plumbers and millwrights is a serious problem for any local company which contemplates the expansion of its operations in Guyana, or any overseas company contemplating investment in Guyana,” Persaud told the GTI graduating class.
According to Persaud the international mobility of skilled workers has become a key component of the global knowledge-based economy.
He noted that here in the region, the Caribbean Community (Caricom) had acknowledged the importance of skilled labour by embracing the free movement of skills across borders.
“There is no nation that does not now recognize the imperative economic role of skilled labour in the growth of its economy and it has become abundantly clear that any country’s investment in technical education and training is an investment in that country’s future,” Persaud added.
