The Ministry of Housing is facilitating skills training for residents in areas where four multi-purpose centres were recently built.
CEO at the Central Housing and Planning Authority Myrna Pitt said her agency is mindful of creating communities and developing its residents. “A community’s establishment…does not end with the allocation of houselots, and as such the Authority has integrated into its operations a community development component, aimed at formulating, along with the community, plans that when implemented, result in the development of both the human and infrastructural resources in the communities,” she said.
Visits by Stabroek News recently to two of these centres have found no activity and the one at Westminster is already showing signs of vandalism.
According to a Government Information Agency press release Community Development Officer Donna Bascom noted that to build social cohesion a number of factors needed to be considered. She said the need for skills training to boost resident’s economic capacity was identified in a 2007 needs assessment undertaken in the housing schemes were the centres have been erected.
Residents of Glasgow, Region Six; Cummings Lodge, Areas C and Y and Sophia B, Region Four; and Westminster, Region Three, were trained in nine different areas. These include catering, housekeeping, sewing and craft undertaken at Carnegie School of Home Economics; and masonry and carpentry done at the GITC and New Amsterdam Technical institute. The Guyana School of Agriculture and Partners of the Americas were also engaged to facilitate kitchen gardening and food processing programmes.
The communities were also engaged in institutional strengthening where working groups were established in areas where none existed. Bascom noted that the communities were able to achieve this due to their ability to engage in a participatory decision-making process to address their social needs. She also said that on completion of the training exercises, they submitted a list of names and the skills of residents who had graduated to the Georgetown and Berbice Chambers of Commerce as well as the Central Recruitment and Manpower Agency so that they may be matched with employment suited to their skills.
The groups were also given equipment to help them to become self-employed. According to Bascom, the relationship between the ministry and the communities continues and since the centres have been commissioned, residents have already proposed ideas on how they can best be utilised. Some of the planned activities include hosting computer training and establishing libraries and day care facilities.
