There appears to be a difference between the Government of Guyana and informed industry opinion regarding the number of jobs which call centres are contributing to the overall tally of jobs being provided for Guyanese in the country’s Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector.
In March this year, at an event held to mark the handing over of 24,145 laptops, a gift from the Chinese Government to buttress the government’s One Laptop Per Family (OLPF) project Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh was quoted in the media as saying that while just a few years ago there were no ICT-related jobs to be had in Guyana, today, almost 3,000 Guyanese work in ICT call centres countrywide, some of which he has visited.
A well-placed industry source who declined to be identified told Stabroek Business, however, that while call centres are indeed the major source of local jobs in the ICT sector, the number of jobs available in call centres was probably more in the region of 2300. The source said he was aware of a projection that this sector would generate around 6,000 jobs “by 2013,” a target which he said would be difficult to meet “bearing in mind the economic downturn in the international markets.”
The source said that while commercial institutions including banks and insurance companies recruit staff to run their ICT operations, those numbers probably total less than 250. “Hiring in this sector is not continuous because these institutions primarily need ICT staff to maintain their off-the-shelf financial information systems,” the source said, adding that there was “no significant software development and related work to generate further employment.”
According to the source, some of the larger manufacturing companies have invested heavily in “mission-critical information systems” and have “some elements of in-house programming to develop and support applications for their day-to-day operations.”
The source told Stabroek Business that during the late 90s and the early part of the current decade the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) led the way in terms of hiring programmers and system analysts. At the time, he said, GuySuCo’s management was seeking pursuing a policy on “in-house development and ICT capacity building.” The source added that there appears to have been a shrinkage of that pursuit which might be attributed to “the current difficulties within the organisation [GuySuCo] and, to some extent, a change of philosophy.”
In the rest of the state sector the industry source noted that both the Guyana Revenue Authority and the Ministry of Finance have recruited high-level ICT staff to maintain critical information systems. “The Guyana Revenue Authority in particular supports extensive in-house software development for their operations,” the source said noting that the local law-enforcement sector had also “invested significantly” in information systems over the past three years and had also recruited support staff.
According to the source, most private sector ICT companies usually hire hardware support and sales staff, adding that there are a few companies that focus on higher-end pursuits including software development and ICT consulting and would therefore hire a few software developers and engineers. The source said that taken together, the number of jobs available in Guyana in the ICT sector might be “roughly around 3,000.”
Meanwhile, the source told Stabroek Business that an urgent priority for the sector must be to work on its own expansion in order to accommodate “around 30 programmers per year” who graduate from a University of Guyana Computer Science Programme that “has improved tremendously over the past three to four years. We simply have to work on expanding the sector to facilitate these graduates otherwise we will lose them.”
