Five to ten per cent of the operations of General Equipment Guyana Ltd. (GENEQUIP) is currently geared toward servicing operators in the oil and gas sector
“Since we have the oil industry coming up, we are also a supplier to the oil industry,” GENEQUIP Operations Manager Schelte Van Dijk told Stabroek News yesterday, while noting that the company has started providing machines, parts, and services to operators in the oil and gas sector.
He was speaking at the company’s base of operations at Plantation Houston, East Bank Demerara (EBD), from where it continues to supply machines, parts, and post-sale servicing of equipment to Guyana’s agriculture, mining, power generation, and material handling sectors, and more recently, the oil and gas sector.
The company invited Finance Minister Winston Jordan, Business Minister Haimraj Rajkumar and Natural Resources Minister Raphael Trotman to tour the complex yesterday afternoon. Speaking to the media after the tour, Jordan said that the “expensive investment” shows “confidence” in Guyana’s economy.
Jordan also said that the location of the operations goes some way toward realising the development plan that was envisaged for South Ruimveldt. He said that the initial plan was for industry to be developed alongside the community to allow residents to obtain employment in the vicinity of their homes. Predicting that GENEQUIP is likely to be followed by other companies in basing their operations at Plantation Houston, he urged businesses that will be following the example to employ persons from the community to work in their operations.
Training of mechanics
Many of the persons who work in the company’s workshops servicing equipment have, at some point or another, been trained through an extensive training programme developed through a partnership with local technical schools.
Van Dijk explained that for some years now, the company has partnered with the Government Technical Institute (GTI) whereby it trains GTI’s lecturers, who in turn train students in various areas of mechanics.
He said this collaboration started after the company realised that “there was a gap whenever we started to employ people coming out of GTI…they did not have the right skillset, so it took about at least a year or two years before they were ready to work in our industry”.
Now, “by the time they come into the industry…it takes them about six months to catch up to where we are,” Van Dijk explained.
He also said that over the years of training, the company has realised that women tend to be more dependable than men, more often striving for precision, even if it takes them a while to finish, whereas men tend to prioritise getting the job done quickly, but not always correctly.
As a result of these observations, Van Dijk said at Farm Supplies, one of its operations, there are four women in the workshop and all the planners are women. “At this location we have one female in the workshop, and all our planners are females,” he added.
Van Dijk also noted that one of the company’s employees, who began working there after he left high school and who was trained by the company, has placed third in a world skills competition for mechanics. The employee is currently a Product Support Manager at the company.
GENEQUIP Ltd.’s operations also includes Farm Supplies Limited as well as a bonded warehouse located in Eccles.
