THE Small Business Bureau (SBB) has partnered with the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) to offer business development support to retrenched sugar workers.

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the SBB, Dr. Lowell Porter, told the Department of Public Information (DPI) that the bureau recently completed training of 110 retrenched workers and their family members from the Wales and East Demerara Estates.

Training was provided in skill sets such as sewing, cookery, leather craft and fabric design. Dr. Porter disclosed that GuySuCo will hire some of the recent trainees to work in the remaining factories and estates. The SBB’s partnership with GuySuCo is intended to achieve the economic resilience component of the corporation’s alternative livelihoods programme that was developed for the retrenched workers.

The SBB is committed to ensuring that workers and families that benefit from training are properly established, Dr. Porter noted. “We will, through GuySuCo or with GuySuCo, go back into the community to find out what they are doing and exactly what they are doing and what needs they have.”

The SBB has also offered to provide training in areas such as business start-up, record-keeping and other technical skills, such as assisting with access to financing. Dr. Porter notes that this offer also extends to the families of retrenched workers. “We understand that maybe not those people that are being retrenched might be the ones coming to the training or interested, or maybe even capable of even doing it, but we’ve extended that to the families because we believe that it’s the families, it’s the communities, the households that need help.”

Meanwhile, the Small Business Bureau will fund another round of training for the retrenched workers later this month. “Through Critchlow Labour College, GITC, where they are going to be trained in carpentry and masonry,” Dr. Porter explained. The alternative livelihoods programme is aimed at securing the employment of workers as estates are being amalgamated and closed. (DPI)