Dear Editor,
It was refreshing to see the recent long letter written by our Honourable Prime Minister advising that “we must shift from distribution and redistribution to production and productivity”. Our experienced PM must be complimented for taking this stand and with respect, I wish to humbly underscore that any such shift requires a strategic re-orientation and determined push to re-direct action on:
- STEM i.e graduates in Science, Technology, Engineering and Management to facilitate the changes;
- HRD i.e Human Resource Development to sustain change or, as our learned PM reminded us, learning to fish in order to feed ourselves for life.
I was especially impressed by the PM’s frank acknowledgement that his decades of experience in the bauxite industry taught him that “business success does not come easily and that socialists tend to under-estimate, under-value and even belittle the contribution of the capitalists”. My own experience in the ‘capitalist run’ sugar and rum industries leads me to a similar conclusion.
I believe that most Guyanese of the same vintage as the PM and myself will readily recall Bauxite’s and Booker’s substantial attention to technical training and human resource development via apprenticeships to produce tradesmen and operatives, plus cadetships/scholarships for development of the managerial and executive cadres. Many ‘graduates’ of these initiatives became successful captains of industry, enterprises and organizations at home and abroad.
Interestingly, our PM also adverts to the issues of income disparities and the role of taxation in earnings re-distribution. I do not think we should ignore the power of solid, relevant education, skills training and attitudinal/behavioral changes as natural levers (as opposed to contrived, manipulated taxation) to address income inequalities and mal-distribution of earnings.
Furthermore, I believe a concerted refocus and possible expansion of the role and programmes of entities like the Boards of Industrial Training and TVET as well as our Technical Institutes across the country are necessary steps at this stage of our (under)development.
Yours faithfully,
Nowrang Persaud
