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.