Minister of Public Service Sonia Parag yesterday defended the government’s Guyana Online Academy of Learning (GOAL) scholarship programme.
During the parliamentary debate on the 2023 budget, Parag said that since assuming office, the PPP/C government has implemented programmes and instituted policies that make a difference in Guyanese lives.
“While we continue to raise salaries incrementally, we are also focusing on making lives easier for all Guyanese across every sector; be it providing improved access to housing and water; or delivering increased opportunities for academic and skills development. Mr. Speaker, my realisation that the main Opposition is truly barefaced and conscienceless came after they started hurling criticisms at our scholarship policies, including GOAL, which continues to see thousands of Guyanese from every nook and cranny of this country benefiting from fully-funded opportunities to earn higher academic qualifications ranging from certificates, all the way to PhDs,” she added.
According to Parag, investment in the GOAL Scholarships continues to positively impact the lives of Guyanese in all parts of the country, and that since its launch in 2021, close to 14,000 persons have been awarded scholarships to study online at various universities across the world.
“For 2022, a total of 7,680 persons were awarded scholarships under the Guyana Online Academy of Learning” she added. Of that number 167 awardees were from Region One, 558 from Region Two, 1,429 from Region Three, 3,090 from Region Four, 635 from Region Five, 894 from Region Six, 191 from Region Seven, 46 from Region Eight, 143 from Region Nine and 527 from Region Ten.
She noted that while members of the Opposition have criticized this initiative including the fact that the University of Guyana is not part of the GOAL programme, they are also beneficiaries of it.
“Let me make it pellucidly clear, Guyana is developing at a rapid pace, and to satisfy the growing needs of the labour market, we need to act fast to produce the professionals that are required to take advantage of the growing opportunities,” she argued.
She added that the University of Guyana is centralised and it does not offer online programmes and that it merely adapted to Zoom classes as a response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“While the University of Guyana is an excellent institution run by brilliant minds, we acknowledge that it has a far way to go, and the government is committed to providing the requisite support for it to advance,” she said, adding that until that happen, GOAL is an exceptional platform that offers wider and more convenient opportunities for a higher education. She said that it is not an initiative designed by the government and imposed on the Guyanese people and was conceptualised even before the 2020 elections.
Parag noted that GOAL is not the only programme that the government has invested in as the provision of Public Service Scholarships continues. For 2022, she said, 420 persons were completing their scholarship programmes at a number of local institutions including the University of Guyana and Carnegie School of Home Economics. Similarly, 1221 persons will be continuing their scholarship studies beyond 2022.
The minister said that the local scholarships will see awardees earning 176 certificates/Diplomas, 77 Diplomas/Associate’s Degrees, 920 Bachelor’s Degrees, 47 Master’s Degrees, and one Doctoral Degree.
As for those awarded overseas scholarships, a total of 76 scholars wrapped up their studies in 2022, while 204 persons are continuing their programmes.
For persons studying overseas, 52 will be obtaining certificates, while 68 will be obtaining Bachelor’s Degrees, 81 Master Degrees and 3 Doctoral Degrees, she revealed.
“As Guyana continues to prepare itself for the many opportunities that will come, it is important that we modernize and train and re-train our public servants to be as effective as possible. This responsibility lies with the training department of the Ministry of Public Service, which was recently revamped, and has been functioning effectively to meet the needs of the public service” she added.
According to Parag, last year, 808 public servants across various agencies were trained in a number of areas including communication, change management, customer service delivery, professionalism and ethics in the work place, human resource development and government accounting procedures among many others.
“Our 2023 forecast already sets out to train 4,750 public servants, so we are moving fast, and we are ready to take Guyana to the next level,” she said.
As it relates to the Centre for Excellence in Information Technology, Parag said that government is aiming to execute training that will ultimately make the public service more technologically capable and friendly.
“To go even further, our training departments have gone above and beyond to facilitate not just public service training, but the training of members of the public as well. For instance, we launched a programme to train more than a dozen women in Mocha, certifying and equipping them with the technological knowledge and skills required for them to secure jobs at places such as Qualfon and others. We are working for our people across the length and breadth of this nation and they are seeing it,” she said.
