–Prime Minister tells Diamond residents

WITH Guyana poised for massive development and modernisation, the need for a skilled labour force will grow exponentially, and across all sectors.
This is the projection of Prime Minister, Brigadier (Ret’d) Mark Phillips, who said that the government’s 20,000 online scholarships initiative seeks to ensure that Guyanese are positioned to take full advantage of the opportunities that are to come.
“What we don’t want is to have a population of 750,000 Guyanese and a million foreign workers,” the Prime Minister told residents during an outreach hosted at the New Diamond/Grove Primary School on Wednesday. He noted that, in an effort to prepare Guyana for all the prosperity that will come, significant investments must be directed towards the country’s human resources, and building capacity across all sectors.
“We don’t want Guyana to develop and you are not part of the development. We want you to educate yourself, so you must be the ones to take ownership of Guyana,” Phillips posited.

He noted that even though the scholarships were being provided free of cost to Guyanese learners, they were being fully financed by the Government of Guyana.
In encouraging persons to capitalise on the landmark academic opportunity, the Prime Minister reflected on his own life. He said that after completing secondary school, his desire was to further his education; however, due to financial constraints, he was forced to put his academic endeavours on a 13-year pause.
“What we have today is a scholarship free of charge. If I had that in 1978 it would have been good. I took 30 years to get my education,” Phillips related.
He reminded those present of how fortunate they were to be able to benefit from scholarships being offered via reputable universities across the world, including India and Germany. “Only by signing up and start studying, you will be part and parcel of the new Guyana that we are building for all Guyanese,” the Prime Minister noted.
Phillips related too that he was quite happy to be back in Diamond, delivering on a promise he kept repeating many months leading up to the 2020 General and Regional Elections.

Similar sentiments were echoed by Minister of Natural Resources, Vickram Bharrat, who said that a more skilled workforce puts Guyana in a better position to ensure adherence to the Local Content Policy which is the subject of ongoing consultations.
He said that the scholarships were being offered as part of a bigger plan to ensure that Guyanese benefit from the transformation boom that Guyana will experience within the coming years. “If we are going to argue that the oil companies must [employ] Guyanese, then we, as a government, need to train our people, otherwise, the oil companies would say we are willing to employ Guyanese, but you don’t have trained Guyanese,” Bharrat reasoned.
The Minister also used the forum to urge residents to become vaccinated against COVID-19, and to be wary of misinformation being peddled in relation to side effects.
“We need to put aside all these negative comments by people who are not even in the medical field, or people who have never gotten any reactions to the vaccine, but criticize it,” Bharrat said.

He reminded persons, too, that Guyana is one of the few countries that is able to boast about having a sufficient quota of vaccines to cover its entire adult population.
Meanwhile, Public Service Minister, Sonia Parag, reminded that unlike the regular Public Service scholarships, the programmes being offered via the Guyana Online Academy of Learning (GOAL) come with no strings attached.
Parag explained that the Ministry of Education has the responsibility of vetting the applicants to ensure that they are qualified for the courses, after which the Ministry of Public Service will assume the responsibility of issuing the scholarships.

“We want to give out 4,500 scholarships this year alone,” Parag noted, adding that the GOAL scholarship programme will run over the next five years, and as it expands, more courses will be added. “Just recently, a few days ago, more courses were added, so in addition to the 85 courses, we now have technical and vocational training,” Parag told the Diamond/Grove residents. She emphasized that the courses are flexible and do not demand constant internet connectivity.
“You can work online at your own convenience. You can download your work,” Parag said. She noted that even though the courses are internationally recognised and being offered by reputable universities, it does not pressure learners into always maintaining perfect grades.
“The government only requires you to maintain a C average,” the Public Service Minister posited.