President Irfaan Ali on Friday played up the prospects of the University of the West Indies (UWI) School of Medicine partnering with Guyana to train doctors at the training institute which is being built in New Amsterdam.
Last month, President Ali turned the sod for a new US$161 million New Amsterdam Hospital located a stone’s throw away from the present New Amsterdam Hospital. Ali had said that the new four-storey hospital will mark a significant step towards establishing a Level Five health facility in Region Six, highlighting that the hospital will not be a standalone facility but will operate on a hub-and-spokes mechanism, connecting health centres in the region through telemedicine.
Two additional buildings will be constructed within the hospital’s compound: a teaching facility and a modern psychiatric facility.
Commissioning the first phase of the Guyana Technical Training Inc in Port Mourant on Friday, Ali said that a new style of training and teaching is being embarked on to ensure that the country’s human resource is ready for all that is coming in the future.
He said, “We are already working now on the teaching hospital in New Amsterdam that will be completed in another two years, the new level five hospital will also now and we’ve just concluded the arrangement where the University of the West Indies School of Medicine will be our education partner here in Berbice training doctors.”
The President had first made the announcement about the UWI link at last Sunday’s commissioning of a pathology lab at the Georgetown Public Hospital
The announcement of the UWI link has seen praise by residents of Berbice especially parents who took to social media to express their excitement that their children can study to become doctors right in the ancient county.
Ali further explained that he has also had talks with the University of West Indies School of Nursing resulting in him instructing the Minister of Health, Dr Frank Anthony to craft an agreement with the university to have “their nursing programme accredited to the new school of nursing that we are building in the region so that the children in region six, two, ten who will be doing nursing will be having a University of West Indies nursing degree, that is quality we are investing in.”
After the Guyana Technical Training College Inc is fully being constructed the college will be design-ed to facilitate oil and gas training (Track 1) funded by ExxonMobil, Hospitality and Tourism Institute (Track 2) funded by the government with the Caribbean Development Bank and the Port Mourant Training College (Track 3) which falls under GuySuCo and the Ministry of Agriculture.
The sod turning for Track 2 – the Hospitality and Tourism Institute, is expected to be done sometime next week, and Ali on Friday hinted that, “by the time the institute of hospitality is completed we will have one of the best internationally accredited partner, accrediting and being part of the degree awarding system of that institute.”
As such he stressed that it is not only about building the training facilities but rather it is about “building the facilities that make our human resource the most marketable internationally.”
Ali on Friday said, that he was convinced that the country is heading in the right direction. “I’m convinced that all of Guyana will benefit from the development that is coming our way.”
Sugar refinery
Meanwhile, Ali also said that his government is on the verge of completing discussions to have a sugar refinery in Enmore, “the Enmore Estate that was abandoned and left to scrap metal will be converted into a sugar refinery.”
According to him, training will have to be carried out at the GTTCI with about 150 persons in specialized areas to work in that refinery, “and we are at the final stage of getting the investor to come in to build that refinery.”
The refinery was first mentioned by the President at last week’s Private Sector Commission dinner.
The President then took the opportunity to assert that the work the government is doing is not “guesswork” but rather a careful agenda of development. He said, “It requires patience. It requires understanding. It requires sticking to the task, it requires believing in ourselves, believing in our country and believing in the future we have and I can tell you I have the most difficult task now, this government, because the next seven years I told Alistair (Routledge – General Manager and Lead Country Manager, ExxonMobil) we really got to bring some of these fruits earlier than 2030 because the next seven years is the hard work, slogging out but trust me who comes in 2030 will inherit the fruits of the labour because then is when the results of all the hard work in the next seven years will flow, the benefits.”
Ali stressed, that his government is focused on doing the hard work so that the future of Guyana can enjoy the “fruits of the labour.”
