The importance of an accelerated upgrading of the country’s human resource base to a level where Guyanese can access key jobs in the country’s oil and gas sector has triggered a disclosure by the Ministry of Education that it is seeking the services of a Consultant to undertake an audit to determine the extent to which the country’s skills will require upgrading to meet the job requirements.
As the profile of the country’s oil and gas industry continues to increase, and the desirability of having more Guyanese taking up high-level jobs in the sector, the Education Ministry’s notice would appear to be a signal that government is now being pushed into determining, in the shortest possible time, just where the country is at this time in terms of its ability to fill important positions in the expanding oil and gas industry. Occasional official pronouncements on the human resource constraints which the country’s oil and gas sector is increasingly likely to face, as it seeks to secure a further foothold in high-skilled job areas, appears to be driving the administration to want to be seen to be paying an enhanced interest in ensuring that more Guyanese are qualified to fill those positions. That desire, however, is likely to go nowhere unless it takes a more focused account of the prevailing local skills deficit and the need to create training opportunities through which that deficiency can be corrected.
A notice made public by the Ministry of Education recently disclosed that it was seeking the support of the World Bank to fund a consultancy aimed at addressing skills development, targeting Guyanese residing at home. What the Ministry says it is seeking, in the first instance, are Consultants to undertake “a rapid assessment of the current workforce in Guyana, skills gaps and potential migrant labour needs”. Beyond that the Ministry of Education, it appears, will be using the returns from the consultancy to help create the resources associated with the development of a suitable curriculum for the delivery of those skills. The specifications dictate that the consultancy be executed, “based on desk and field research, primary data collection and statistical analysis, qualitative information through interactions with key local authorities, private sector academia and civil society.”
What remains to be seen is whether what is evidently a key hurdle that the country will have to clear if local skills are to secure a higher profile in the country’s oil and gas sector, will be attended by a corresponding sense of urgency on the part of government in the matter of the actual execution of the assignments detailed in the advertisement. Government has said that the sense of urgency attached to the assignment is linked to the importance of adjusting the skills balance between locals and expatriates in key jobs in the oil and gas sector to reflect a higher level of Guyanese representation.
Part of the broader consultancy exercise is expected to include the likely revision of aspects of the country’s Local Content Act to allow for local enterprises to further benefit from the returns to be secured from the ongoing work in the country’s oil and gas industry. The importance of raising the local skills levels among Guyanese in order to better position them for lucrative jobs in the oil and gas sector is also reportedly driving the push to make education at the University free from 2025.
