A meeting held on Tuesday March 22 at the Passage to Asia Restaurant in Trinidad and Tobago and addressed by Foreign Secretary Robert Persaud, saw the Guyana Government official make a spirited appeal to Guyanese in the twin-island Republic to return home to help address what he said was the country’s urgent need for 100,000 workers, according to a report in the Trinidad Guardian of Wednesday March 23.
Last Tuesday’s meeting, according to the Guardian came on the back of a broader appeal to Guyanese in the diaspora to consider returning home to build their country in the wake of the promised transformation envisaged in the light of the country’s substantial oil discoveries.
The report says that Persaud, who held the Agriculture and Natural Resources portfolios in the Bharrat Jagdeo administration was one of a number of officials of the current Irfaan Ali government to address the meeting on Tuesday.
The Guardian reports Persaud as making a ‘return home’ appeal to Guyanese against the backdrop of what he said was a Guyanese economy that is “growing at a fast pace” and in need of “both skilled and unskilled workers to fit public and private sector jobs.” According to the Guardian report Persaud’s ‘back home’ call was buttressed by “several incentives including tax concessions on personal effects such as vehicles and housing lots in Guyana.”
Persaud’s ‘pitch’ to Guyanese in the twin-island Republic comes against the backdrop of what has been a wider appeal to Guyanese in the diaspora that has also
targeted the United States and the United Kingdom and which is undergirded by the economic prospects for the country’s economy in the light of its new-found oil wealth.
What the Foreign Secretary is also reported to have told his audience was that the call for overseas-based Guyanese to return home comes ahead of any plans to attract non-nationals.
In recent months Guyana’s international profile has soared on the back of the country’s hosting of international oil and gas fora as well as engaging foreign companies and businessmen who have been travelling to Guyana to ‘look over’ the country’s investment prospects in the light of the emergence of its oil and gas industry. Guyanese officials, including President Ali have also been seeking to ramp up international attention to Guyana’s economic prospects by travelling to countries in the Caribbean, the Middle East and elsewhere to blow the country’s ‘open for investment’ trumpet.
The Foreign Secretary told the Guardian Media that “the Government has had meetings with members of the Guyanese diaspora living in the United States and Suriname,” and is also reported to have expressed a broader interest in reaching Guyanese elsewhere in the diaspora.
Numbered among the Guyana Government officials who spoke at the Trinidad and Tobago event was Minister of Agriculture, Zulfikar Mustapha who said the Guyana was ramping up its food production and was offering incentives to investors in that sector. Mustapha disclosed that the Guyana Government was aiming to “move agricultural production into the area of downstream production for export and that several processing plants would be supporting this objective in various regions of the country.
“Guyana believes that the region can also become self-sufficient in poultry production rather than importing poultry products from outside the region,” the Guardian quoted Mustapha as saying.
The Minister was also reported as saying that “Guyana plans to produce two annual crops on 25,000 acres of corn and soya in three years for poultry feed production.”
The Trinidad and Tobago-based Guyanese who attended the meeting expressed concern about “cross border security with Venezuela, the social effects of repatriation, the ease of doing business, and guarantees of getting jobs.”
