Dear Editor,
Many new graduates searching for a job lack the experience they need to get their dream job. They have spent years studying and have good grades. However, without the relevant industry experience, many employers are not willing to take the risk on them, especially for highly technical positions. Usually it takes 10 years to develop expertise in complex fields but no commercial enterprise is willing invest that amount of time on training an employee. Commercial enterprises want new employees that can be productive quickly so in a short period they can recover the training cost of the new employee.
In the original petroleum contract, available on Stabroek News website, Article 19 of the Petroleum Agreement which deals with Employment and Training, states, “Without prejudice to the right of the Contractor to select employees and determine the number thereof in the conduct of petroleum operations, the Contractor shall, to the maximum extent practicable, employ, and encourage sub-contractors to employ Guyanese citizens having appropriate qualifications and experience.” This seems to make sense; you want the oil companies to be using the best experts. However, oil production is new to the Guyanese population so how do Guyanese gain the expertise to be among the best experts such that the foreign companies leading the oil production effort will be comfortable employing them for senior managerial and highly technical positions?
Article 19 further proceeds to further ask the oil company to outlay yearly funds for the training of Guyanese in various aspects of the oil business. But the amount being requested ranges from US$30,000 to US$45,000 per year. If you need to send Guyanese abroad to get training to develop expertise in the oil industry this money is probably sufficient to send a few Guyanese for several weeks of training. You will not develop expertise in various aspects of the oil industry with such a limited amount of funds.
Guyana’s oil and gas reserves are a rare gift that can be leveraged to help its young generation acquire the skills of the future and be employed by commercial enterprises in highly technical and well paying positions. If the terms of those documents, signed in 1999, are kept they will put Guyanese at a disadvantage for gaining expertise in an industry that will potentially be one of Guyana’s most important for many generations.
There are a few solutions countries can leverage to help their young generation acquire the skills of the future and be employed by commercial enterprises in highly technical and well paying positions. They include apprenticeship programmes with a mixture of classroom training from instructors in the trade and on-the-job training. Additionally, there are programmes where the government will subsidize the new employee’s salary so they can gain the relevant experience to become an expert.
While Article 19 is a good starting point, in its current form it does not specify an implementation to properly nurture Guyanese to be competitive experts in an industry that will have a big impact on Guyana for decades. What better training can Guyanese get than working for one of the largest, oldest, and most successful companies, Exxon? The Government of Guyana needs to ensure the contract has provisions to allow Guyanese to develop expertise in the various aspects of the oil business, from exploration and production to refinement and processing. Experts need to be able to understand geological and seismic surveys, the type of recovery technology that can be employed, how to best separate petroleum into various parts such as oil and gas, and many more aspects of the oil industry.
Yours faithfully,
Darshanand Khusial
