Businesses at last Saturday’s Job Fair organized by the Rotary Clubs of Demerara and Georgetown have lauded the initiative as one that should be undertaken more frequently with the support of both the government and the private sector.
The fair, held at the Marian Academy School and aimed at bringing together local business houses and job-seekers to help alleviate the chronic problems of scarce skills and high unemployment, attracted about 12 private sector entities including John Fernandes Ltd, Ansa McAl, Scotia Bank, Church’s Chicken, Professional Guard Service (PGS), Sterling Products Ltd and Global Technology as well as the state-run Guyana Water Inc (GWI). By mid-afternoon, however, far fewer numbers of job seekers than might have been expected found their way to the event.
And while the business houses expressed disappointment at the turnout among job seekers they nonetheless heaped praise on the Rotary for placing on its agenda and giving prominence to the issues of scarce skills and high unemployment; two issues which they said had to be addressed and resolved if the country’s economy is to move in the right direction.
PGS Assistant Administrative Manager Colin Howard told Stabroek Business that the Security Service had decided to attend the Rotary Job Fair after having failed to receive adequate responses to its advertisements in the local media for staff ranging from Shift Supervisors to Guards. By mid-afternoon on Saturday, however, the company’s attendance at the Job Fair had borne little fruit though Howard agreed that the event was worthy of future
emulation.
Robin Sibnand, the John Fernandes Ltd representative at the Job Fair, also told Stabroek Business that his company’s search for several categories of employees including labourers and clerks would probably not have been successful by the end of the fair. Simonne December, Director of Administra-tion at the local Church’s Chicken franchise, which was anticipating that its search for management trainees and crew members might have been rewarded at the Job Fair, also said that that seemed unlikely to happen.
By contrast, the representatives of Ansa McAl and the engineering firm Genequip told this newspaper that they had had engagements with job seekers and had received applications from some of them.
When Stabroek Business spoke with Rotary officials organizing the Job Fair two weeks ago, they had disclosed that marketing of the event had been confined largely to media advertising and that there had been no specific effort to target tertiary institutions like the University of Guyana where skilled and qualified persons were likely to be found.
On Saturday, however, Rotary official Donna Pierre told Stabroek Business that the organization was sufficiently encouraged to contemplate the Job Fair as an annual event and that in the future more emphasis will be placed on employing a broader range of communication channels to ensure that information became accessible to the various target audiences. She said while efforts to optimize the promotion of the Job Fair may have been inhibited by high advertising costs, the Rotary was sufficiently encouraged by the support of both employers and job-seekers to promote the event more aggressively in the future.
Some private sector entities represented at last Saturday’s event also recommended that Job Fairs be organized more frequently, that they be held in various parts of the country and that government, through the Ministry of Labour and the various private sector umbrella organizations work with the Rotary to stage future Job Fairs..
While the Rotary event attracted relatively few job seekers it was hailed by attendees as valuable insofar as it provided useful insights into the problems faced by both private sector entities in their search for skills and job-seekers.
Sterling Products Human Resources Officer Yvette Fiedtkou told Stabroek Business that the company’s efforts to sustain the levels of technical staffing necessary to sustain its operations had led to several initiatives including the creation of in-service apprenticeship schemes and work-study attachments for students of the University of Guyana and Government Technical institutes in areas such as such as chemistry, engineering and refrigeration maintenance and repairs. She said that recently the company’s work study attachment programme with the institutes had hit some hurdles but the company was hoping to have those resolved. At the moment a student from the University of Guyana is serving an attachment with Sterling Products.
