As the oil and gas-driven business and hospitality sectors in Guyana find themselves competing for the same skills sets in some of the sectors of the Guyana economy, businesses are beginning to rate skills shortages among the primary impediments to enhanced service delivery.
High on the list of sectors in which this challenge is manifested is the hospitality sector where some of the key skills sets required for the effective functioning of the sector are being aggressively sought by the oil and gas sector.
While the cash-laden companies in the oil and gas sector are reportedly paying ‘top dollar’ to recruit Chefs, Bartenders and Servers, local Restaurants and ‘Hang Out Joints’ are struggling to ‘stay with the competition,’ according to Executive Director of the Tourism & Hospitality Association of Guyana, Oslyn Kirton.
Speaking with the Stabroek Business earlier this week Kirton said that the identical skills’ sets demands of the two sectors have become a “major challenge” for the local hospitality sector, as a whole.
Earlier this week, amidst contemplating the requisites for the staging of Restaurant Week which commences tomorrow, Friday June 23 and concludes on Sunday July 2, Kirton told the Stabroek Business that the circumstance of the oil and gas sector having ‘pulled away’ many of the Chefs and other skilled workers from the local hospitality sector, the latter now finds itself challenged to sustain the expected quality of service required by patrons.
And according to Kirton the challenge for local restaurants created by the scarcity of critical skills that are essential to their operations has been sufficiently significant to cause some Restaurant owners to decide not to paticipate in the Restaurant Week event this year.
In the instance of the Cara Lodge, one of the country’s best-known hospitality facilities, Kirton told the Stabroek Business that in order to seek to alleviate the problem the entity has had to look overseas in its pursuit of the recruitment of trained Chefs.
The skills challenges of the Cara Lodge, Kirton told the Stabroek Business, also extend to Bartenders, Servers, and Housekeepers.
Kirton explained during her interview with the Stabroek Business that the scarcity of some of the critical but scarce skills in the hospitality sector meant that employers had become mindful of creating conditions that are convivial to curbing the loss of skills.
And according to Kirton the current situation in the country’s hospitality industry had resulted in some discernable changes in the dynamics of the sector. She noted that a point had been reached where Bartenders and Servers now commonly measure their earnings much more by the extent of the ‘tips’ they receive than by their substantive wages. ‘Tips’ for Servers, she said, could, in some instances amount to twenty five thousand dollars per night.
The Hospitality Sector executive related to the Stabroek Business the instance of a University of Guyana student who, having secured a job as a part-time Bartender in order to subsidize the costs associated with his studies having discovered, afterwards, that he was ‘raking in’ as much as eighty thousand ($80 000) dollars per week in tips alone set his academic pursuits, presumably temporarily, to ‘cash in’ on the windfall opportunity afforded by the skills scarcity in the sector.
Kirton told the Stabroek Business and that the skills crisis in the country’s hospitality sector underscores the need for the establishment of a Hospitality Training Institute in Guyana.
While Kirton told the Stabroek Business that THAG is now gearing to embark on a training initiative of its own for the hospitality industry, it will be recalled that as far back as December 2020 the Department of Public Informa-tion had announced that the Caribbean Development Bank had approved a US$11 million loan to Guyana for the development of a hospitality training facility locally. The Stabroek Business was unable to determine What became of the initiative.
Kirton told Stabroek Business that the first course of action under THAG’s planned training programme will be to initiate training for persons currently working in the sector in areas such as Customer Service, Culinary Skills, Housekeeping, Bartending, and Serving Skills. THAG has partnered with the Canadian entity Catalyste+ which specializes in the planning and execution of skills-enhancing initiatives.
Earlier this year, THAG and the Barba-dos Coalition of Service Industries (BCSI) signed a Memorandum of Understanding under BCSI will provide support for the upgrading of the local hospitality sector.
Back in 2020 it had been disclosed that Babados would train 6,000 Guyanese for the local hospitality sector, one of the measures agreed in the wake of a meeting between President Irfaan Ali and Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley on the sidelines of a United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) meeting held in Barbados in October 2021.
Earlier this week Stabroek Business learnt from Training and Licensing Manager at the Guyana Tourism Authority Tamika Inglis that the state agency is currently “fine-tuning” the application process for the on-line training programme and that the first batch of trainees will number one thousand persons.
