Expressions of concern from the private sector over what it says is a scarcity of skills in key areas of the productive sector are nothing new. Some of the country’s major enterprises have long moved in the direction of embarking on their own in-service training programmes and offering scholarships to employees to study specific disciplines at UG and other institutions. These are usually attended by contractual arrangements designed to ensure at least a worthwhile period of post-training retention.
Human resource deficiencies in the private sector have traditionally been associated – to a greater extent – with specific white collar skills including disciplines like management and accountancy. In the state sector too, GuySuCo has suffered heavy losses in various disciplines that have to do with both the production of sugar and the management of the industry, with several of its trained personnel moving on either to other parts of the region or further afield.
More recently, there have been renewed expressions of concern emanating from the coastal private sector over skills losses, on this occasion, blue collar workers, who are pursuing more lucrative employment opportunities not outside Guyana but in the local gold mining sector.
If this development does not appear to have triggered any public expressions of alarm, that is probably because large, reputable business organisations are not about to concede that their operations are being compromised by a loss of skills. The concern does, however, reflect itself, in what now appears to be a pattern of advertising for personnel to fill particular vacancies.
Information gleaned from some private sector officials suggest that heavy duty machine operators, engineers and skilled mechanics are landing jobs in the gold industry which are paying several times more than what they had been earning from their jobs. In some cases, we are told, excavator operators may land contracts that earn them financial rewards based on the returns from the mining pits.
The movement of labour to the gold industry also reportedly includes cooks, domestic workers and vehicle drivers all of whom are compensated handsomely compared with what they earned in their previous jobs. From what we have been told, the movement of people to the gold-mining areas also applies to communities outside Georgetown with reports of skills shortages in the aforementioned areas emanating from Berbice and Essequibo as well.
The movement of skills to the mining sector is of course hardly surprising given the sustained high prices which the commodity has fetched and the significantly increased investments in the sector. Some months ago, the Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners Association (GGDMA) alluded to a shift in attention to the gold industry by some traditional urban businesses operating either directly in the sector, or else financing other investors based on agreements that realized repayment based on returns from the ventures.
What all this amounts to, of course, is the emergence of an increasingly important role for gold in the Guyana economy with the proceeds from the industry impacting on an increasing number of lives and, it would appear, creating what in some cases may well be once-in-a-lifetime opportunities for individuals and families.
If there are as yet no indications that the gold bubble will burst in the short term, the nature of the industry dictates the price volatility considerations will eventually bring changes to the sector. What we are witnessing therefore is a period during which considerable numbers of ordinary Guyanese are engaged in what in effect are short-term opportunistic pursuits which, they hope, will bring about longer-term positive changes in their lives. There can be no faulting them for seizing those opportunities particularly in cases where the options are far from attractive. There are, however, challenges and difficulties associated with such decisions and these have to do with the separation of families and, these days, with what has become a culture of crime and violence that has become commonplace in a transformed gold-mining industry.
The risks and challenges notwithstanding, more Guyanese appear to be making what in many instances are life-changing decisions, knowing only too well that, for so many reasons, their ventures could go well or they could go badly. Still, if the opportunity afforded by what the gold-mining sector has to offer can help reduce poverty and raise the standard of living of ordinary Guyanese we must not only applaud the decisions that they take but hope that such life-changing goals as they set themselves can be realized.
