–says oil revenues better spent on skills training, educational programmes

GHANAIAN oil and gas expert, George Owusu, has advised the Government of Guyana that while it is important to invest in social programmes, annual distributions of cash grants should not be part of the development plans.

Quoting the well-known proverb, “If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime,” Owusu said major investments in skills training, capacity building and education would serve the nation better.

Speaking on the sidelines of the ongoing International Energy Conference and Expo, the O&G expert said investing in education and skills training would boost the marketability of each individual and would create an avenue for increased income levels.

“I don’t believe in subsidies and giving people cash, you have to work for it. I’d rather spend the money on training so that their income level would go up. If you’re a welder and you don’t have any training and you’re trained and certified, automatically your pay goes up instead of sitting at home and getting paid.

“If you have to send them overseas for training fine, if you have to bring trainers to train them fine, now whatever you do when you improve the quality of the person’s skillset, you’d be able to make the money instead of just sitting down and somebody giving you money,” Owusu said.

EDUCATION INVESTMENTS
In the government’s milestone $552.9 billion budget for this year – the first budget which is partly funded by oil revenues – a sum of $1.3 billion was approved for the Guyana Online Academy of Learning (GOAL).

This initiative paves the way for Guyanese learners to have access to several internationally recognised institutions, such as the University of the West Indies Open Campus, the University of the Southern Caribbean, the University of Applied Sciences in Germany, as well as the Indira Gandhi National Open University, the JAIN University, and the Sherlock Institute of India.

At no cost to them, Guyanese applicants had the opportunity to choose from over 104 available programmes. As part of the GOAL platform, 20,000 online scholarships would be awarded over the next five years, while another 4,500 students are expected to benefit from online scholarships in 2022.

The government has allocated a total of $74.4 billion for the education sector in the 2022 budget, and this will cover an increase in education grants for school children, laptops for teachers, and the expansion of the National School Feeding Programme, among other things.

The allocation represented a 22.6 per cent increase from 2021, and accounts for 13.5 per cent of the overall $552.9 billion 2022 budget.
Additionally, $295.7 million has been set aside to purchase laptops and other devices for 425 teachers.

Other measures included in the Ministry of Education’s budget allocation include $1.2 billion for the purchase of textbooks for public school learners, over $20 million for the purchase of 2,000 micro-science kits, $3.5 billion for the University of Guyana (UG), and $6.6 billion for the construction, rehabilitation, extension, and maintenance of educational facilities.

The $6.6 billion for works on educational facilities caters for the construction of the long-awaited Prospect Secondary School, as well as the reconstruction of the North Ruimveldt and North West Secondary Schools, which were severely damaged by fire in 2021.