Prime Minister Samuel Hinds charged the final batch of 2010 graduates from the National Training Project for Youth Empowerment (NTPYE) to become entrepreneurs rather than employees.
According to a Government Information Agency (GINA) press release Hinds told the trainees that once there is a need for commodities there will always be job opportunities. “You have to get better at your jobs so that productivity will increase and income levels would rise for the producers without significant rise in cost to the consumers,” he said.
GINA said 175 students graduated were trained in 25 various skills. They were also attached to 40 private and public sector entities over the six month training period.
In his address, Minister of Labour Manzoor Nadir recalled that in President Bharrat Jagdeo’s 2010 New Year’s address to the nation he had challenged the training institutions to train 4000 vulnerable people this year. He said the ministry took on that challenge and has since graduated a total of 2047; students while other persons have been trained under various other programmes with some still undergoing training and expected to graduate in the first quarter of 2011.
Nadir said the number of persons trained over the past three years has greatly increased. As such he extended congratulations to the members of the Board of Industrial Training (BIT) over the past year and also shared government’s gratitude for the effort that has been put into uplifting young and vulnerable persons over the past years.
“We are extremely proud of your successes and Linden has one of the highest completion rates for all of our programmes, in excess of 90% completion and the placement rate for jobs in Linden is above the national average of 60% also,” the minister told the graduates. “I say the lesson in life is don’t forget where you’ve come from, don’t get stuck in the past but always remember the journey started some time ago and you may need to reach back whence you came to extend a helping hand to other young people like yourselves,” Nadir said.
GINA said President of the Linden Chamber of Commerce Marvin Burns; Project Coordinator Coreen Connelly and Principal of the Linden Training Institute and BIT board member Denis Jaikaran joined parents and other well-wishers at the ceremony hosted in the Egbert Benjamin Hall.
