I would like to thank Stabroek News the article on our skills training programme in yesterday’s edition.    Stabroek News is commended for the support it has given to these training programmes via these articles.
I just have three observations:
-Under the NTPYE the drop out rate is about 10%.  Reading the article one gets the impression that the drop out rate is very high as 1,798 started and 1,143 finished.  Thus the programme was not as successful as it appears.  What we have, was because of the over 700 of the batch of 2009 would be graduating this month.  They were placed in 2009 but the six months period ends in March 2009.  Thus we would be graduating over 1700 of the batch for 2009.
– Second, the job placement rate is over 60% in the first three months after graduation.  This rate is also contained the recently validate Baseline Survey by the EPTSI (UNDP)
– Also while we have the operations in 8 regions now, we are working to cover Regions 8 and 9 this year.