– Linden’s 175 is final batch
Prime Minister, Samuel Hinds, Monday, charged the final batch of graduating students of the Ministry of Labour’s National Training Project for Youth Empowerment (NTPYE) for 2010 not to depend on employers for employment, but to go out into the world of work and become entrepreneurs.
Mr. Hinds, in explaining to the graduates about society’s needs and their impact on the economic activity of a country, assured them that once there is need for commodities, there will always be job opportunities.
The Prime Minister also told the trainees, “You have to get better at your jobs so that productivity will increase and income levels would rise for the producers, without significant rise in cost to the consumers.”
Minister of Labour, Manzoor Nadir, in his address to the graduates at the Egbert Benjamin Hall in Linden, said that in President Bharrat Jagdeo’s 2010 New Year’s address to the nation, he had challenged the training institutions to train 4,000 vulnerable people this year.
He noted that his Ministry took up that challenge and has since graduated a total of 2,047, while another set of people has been trained under various other programmes, and others are still in training and will graduate in the first quarter of 2011, bringing the total extremely close to President Jagdeo’s proposed figure.
The Minister observed that over the past three years, the number of persons graduating has increased exponentially.  He extended congratulations to the members of the Board of Industrial Training (BIT) and also shared government’s gratitude for the effort that has been shown for the young and vulnerable people over the past years.
“We are extremely proud of your successes and Linden has one of the highest completion rate for all of our programmes, in excess of 90% completion; and the placement rate for jobs in Linden is above the national average of 60% also,” Minister Nadir told the graduates.
“I say the lesson in life is don’t forget where you’ve come from, don’t get stuck in the past, but always remember the journey started some time ago and you may need to reach back whence you came to extend a helping hand to other young people like yourselves,” he urged them.
Also at the gathering were parents and other relatives of the graduating batch; trainers; President of the Linden Chamber of Commerce, Marvin Burns; Project Coordinator, Coreen Connelly; and Principal of the Linden Training Institute and BIT board member, Denis Jaikaran.
The 175 young people were trained in 25 skills and were attached to 40 private and public sector entities over the six-month training period.
The objective of the NTPYE Programme, since its inception on June 20, 2005, has been to train 5,250 vulnerable and unemployed youths to a semi-skilled level with skills which are vital to their development. The programme is two-fold, in that it equips individuals with the skills and knowledge to gain employment and access to further technical and vocational education and training, while at the same time equipping them with the skills to cope with day to day living.
Many of the students, of whom a large portion were high school dropouts, single parents and the unskilled and unemployed, expressed gratitude to the Government of Guyana for providing them with a second chance at life and a better opportunity for gainful employment. (GINA)