By Jerry Haar
Guyanese highly value education, and that bodes well as the country seeks to capitalise on its oil and gas largesse and finally build the nation that all Guyanese have hoped for since independence in 1970.
An encouraging development along these lines is the recent announcement that the government will offer 20,000 online scholarships to prepare Guyanese for the energy sector among others. The training is intended to be very practical, tied to industry, and aimed at local human capital development, since petroleum-related jobs are presently staffed by foreigners. Scholarship recipients have a choice of more than 80 programmes offered via GOAL (Guyana Online Academy of Learning), including the University of the West Indies.
This pronouncement by the vice president comes in the wake of discussions with ExxonMobil regarding the establishment of training facilities in Guyana. One should hope that other energy companies engaged with Guyana such as BP, Total, Hess, Shell, and CNOOC, also come forward and support human capital development in the country, whether it be for their specific industrial sector or others.
