–helps prepare 140 ex-GuySuCo workers for alternative employment

THE government, through the Small Business Bureau (SBB), has ensured that 140 former staff members of the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) have been trained to take up other jobs, particularly in the field of entrepreneurship.

The 140 are a fraction of the 4000 GuySuCo staff who were retrenched during the company’s recent effort to downsize in order to remain economically viable.

According to SBB Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Dr. Lovell Porter, the workers were drawn from the Wales and Enmore Sugar Estates.

“We took the responsibility to train those workers in December, after we realised that people need help and some of them have the capacity to become a wage earner in a different way,” Dr Porter said.

He said that while more workers will be trained this year, in order to ascertain the content of the training, the SBB will be conducting an assessment with GuySuCo to see what their needs are and how best they can fulfil them.

The SBB is a government agency which assists small entrepreneurs with training, and financial and business support options.

It was established under the Small Business Act of 2004, with a mandate to coordinate programmes for small business development and promote issues relating to, or affecting small businesses.

Dr. Porter said that although they didn’t budget for the project, the SBB was yet able to successfully train the 140 workers, by diverting sums from their current budget.

“No money was allocated or budgeted for that project, so we are bending over backwards, because the situation with GuySuCo got worse after the budget submission,” Dr. Porter said Thursday during a press briefing at the SBB’s headquarters in La Penitence.

He said that so far, they have spent some $6M to train the former sugar workers, and that an upcoming one to be held at the Government Industrial Training Centre (GITC)will cost a further $1.7M.

Asked if the institutions used to train the retrenched workers are accredited, Dr Porter responded in the affirmative, saying that the SBB has 14 training partners, all of which have been accredited by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

Chairperson of the Small Business Council, Ms Valrie Grant said the SBB will introduce its resource centre this year, and that it will be geared towards helping persons to make their business ideas a reality.

The resource centre, as explained by SBB officials, is expected to improve the ability of persons to access grants because one of the major issues for people is access to finance.