The government doesn’t have jobs to give out and as such is moving to encourage entrepreneurship, where people create job opportunities for themselves, President David Granger said on “The Public Interest” last Friday.
“We want to help people to help themselves,” he said.
Granger said that government wants to ensure that more people stay in school and qualify themselves, ensure that more job opportunities are opened in the private sector especially in the rural and hinterland communities where government would be encouraging persons to get involved in agro processing, as well as encourage more entrepreneurship.
“People even while they are in school will be encouraged to go into business rather than to look forward to jobs in the private sector,” he said.
“These are some of the directions we are moving towards and now that we are taking more decisive steps in the area of renewable energy we expect that a lot of young people would be going into those fields,” he said.
Granger said Guyana is a promising country with a lot of opportunities.
“We need to change from the mindset that government owes people employment and create in the minds of young people the desire to go out there and work and do well and I think that Guyana has probably got greater prospects than other Caribbean countries in that regard,” he said.
During the lead up to the polls, the APNU+AFC coalition had promised that if it got into power emphasis will be placed on creating jobs for young people. It has been noted that the public, especially young people, had high hopes for this and almost one year later there is no evidence of such.