Dear Editor
Some eighteen years ago was my first and, as it proved, only experience of initiating a formal interview process in a bar. I arrived by appointment in response to an application mailed to GuySuCo from New York. An intermediary had arranged the interface at a time when the Brooklyn facility was virtually empty.
I still have the photograph of this exceptional experience: engaging a young apprehensive graduate who keenly wanted to return to work in Guyana. My initial positive instincts were increasingly confirmed as I evaluated the promising talent of this self-confident candidate.
The outcome was that he soon came to GuySuCo; was seen; and conquered the judgement of my colleagues who were then more familiar with the technological advantages of ‘AUTO-CAD’ than I was at the time.
It turned out that he was an ardent sportsman as well. Sometime during his stay he was injured at football and later was forced to re-migrate. I had also demitted office by that time. So between us there is no certainty whatever became of the operations of AUTO-CAD in the sugar industry.
The above reminiscence was activated by the reported reference (published in KN (Sunday), Sunday Chronicle and SN (Monday) to the introduction of AUTO-CAD at the Port Mourant Apprentice Training Centre, on the occasion of its 49th Graduation Ceremony. It was in context with other varied (if not random) observations: to ‘automate’ and to ‘mechanise’; to ‘adjust the current academic curriculum to lift industry standards’; to ‘adapt to the dynamics of globalisation’; and finally to be ‘torch bearers’ of change – a responsibility which possibly accounted for only forty-three youths being attracted to an institution which years ago was forced to expand to accommodate one hundred students annually.
In the same deep breadth was the uncertainty of how reference to the ‘British’ resonated with a generation of students born only twenty years ago.
But to return to the ‘academic curriculum’. It was reported to have consisted of six disciplines, namely: ‘Agri-mechanic, Installation Repair Mechanic, Auto Electrical, Fitter Mechanist, Electrician’ and, according to SC, ‘sugar boiling’.
Cursory research shows that one meaning of the word ‘curriculum’ is: ‘a course of study in one subject’. (In the early 90s the Training Centre had invested in a specialist lecturer in English, given the very observable weakness of both students and instructors in that ‘discipline’. It was considered critically important that they be capable of communicating effectively when the graduates later became supervisors, and moreso, managers).
But what was recognisable from the various published reports of the event, is the consistency of the absence of institutional memory. At its 50th celebration in 2007 of the establishment of this historic technical training institution, no less than the Chief Executive at the time, supported by other dignitaries, announced a planned change of ‘curricula’, particularly in light of the technological development projected at the new Skeldon factory, and the complementary expansion in the mechanisation of field operations.
Now three years later there are further prognostications, rather than the identification of specific deadlines for the respective developmental interventions contemplated.
‘Retention’ of skills has become a fundamental agenda item in human resources management programmes in organisations anywhere. In the instant case of a category of skills with high migratory potential, a corporate human resources development plan should have been presented, with clear indicators for the career options available to groups with current and future skills to be produced by the GuySuCo Training Centre.
One related consideration must of course be the levels of remuneration. The institutional memory will remind some of the industry’s managers and supervisors of the long established Re-grading and Re-classification Scheme, designed in the early 1960’s, to ensure that trades skills were formally and expertly evaluated for classification within a hierarchy, (agreed with the Union concerned); and that they were equitably compensated.
What is the current offering about which today’s graduates are asked to be optimistic?
The ‘challenges’ adverted to would appear to be more the concern of managers involved, than that of their restive young wards.
Yours faithfully,
E. B. John
