Dear Editor,

I thank you for the article on our skills training programme in yesterday’s Sunday Stabroek. Stabroek News is commended for the support it has given to these training programmes via these articles.

I just have three observations:

- under the NTPYE (National Training Programme for Youth Empowerment) the drop-out rate is about 10%. Reading the article one gets the impression that the drop-out rate is very high as 1798 started and 1143 finished, thus the programme was not as successful as it appears. Because of the process, over 700 of the batch of 2009 would be graduating this month. They were placed in 2009 but the six months period ends in March 2009.

Thus we would be graduating over 1700 of the batch for 2009.

- Second, the job placement rate is over 60% in the first three months after graduation. This rate is also contained in the recently validated Baseline Survey by the EPTSI (UNDP).

- Also while we have the operations in eight regions now, we are working to cover Regions 8 and 9 this year.

Again thanks for your support.

Yours faithfully,
Manzoor Nadir
Minister of Labour