Minister of Finance, Dr Ashni Singh says more training opportunities will be made available for Buxton youth, as he presided at a graduation ceremony on Wednesday for graduates from an Information and Communications Technology and Office Procedures course.
According to a GINA report, the Buxton Information Technology Training Centre was furnished with 15 computers for the training which included courses such as Microsoft Office and Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, Microsoft Output, and computer repairs and networking.
Twenty-seven youth graduated at the ceremony hosted at Tipperary Hall, Buxton. Three other ceremonies were held at Enmore, Port Mourant and Bath, The seven-week training session included classroom discussions, questions and answers along with six exams and a final exam, GINA said.
In his address to graduates at Buxton, the minister said government believes that every single Guyanese must be given an opportunity to realize his or her potential.
“We have committed ourselves to investing in education, building schools; today we have achieved universal primary education with primary schools’ facilities, adequate primary school places for every single primary school student in Guyana…we are well on our way to achieving secondary education, universal secondary education, with a university place for every secondary school student. And even in those small villages, hinterland villages, where there isn’t a sufficient population base to support an entire secondary school, we built a school with a dormitory to serve a cluster of villages,” Dr Singh said.
Dr Singh also noted the importance of ICT, saying that it has created more jobs in Guyana than any other industry over the past 10 years. He urged youth to capitalize on every opportunity to acquire as many skills as they can, noting that “Knowledge is something that never goes to waste.” The minister also noted that international companies have been capitalizing on the ICT skills here by establishing call centres at Beterverwagting, Plaisance, Georgetown, Berbice, Eccles, Diamond and in Linden, over the past eight to ten years, providing over 3,000 new jobs.
“You will encounter ICT in whatever you do… So I want to say to you, to give you the commitment that this is not the last ICT training programme that the Government will run in Buxton. I wish to give you a commitment by the Govern-ment of Guyana that we will replicate, we will run another programme. I want the young people to have opportunities, but I hope we’re not turning away more matured persons even if we have another programme or double the class,” the minister said.
Project Manager, Basic Needs Trust Fund (BNTF) Michael Singh said the certification given to the students equips them to seek employment. “We did a first training where the training was funded by the Government of Guyana and the Caribbean Development Bank where we furnished a computer lab at the (Buxton centre), and we had training. This second phase is exclusively funded by the Government of Guyana,” he said.
