GUYANA is a country awash with opportunities, yet it is struggling to fill the jobs that come with it. Minister of Labour and Manpower Planning, Keoma Griffith, recently promoted the government’s National Job Bank.
This initiative is both timely and necessary. However, it also exposes a deeper challenge that no online portal can fix on its own.
The numbers Griffith mentioned deserve honest consideration. Since the job bank was launched in March 2022, the government has registered 16,922 vacancies through the Central Recruitment and Manpower Agency. This figure reflects real economic momentum. Yet, out of those thousands of openings, only 2,960 people were placed, and just 1,837 are in active employment.
This means the placement rate is less than 18 per cent, impressive as a start, but concerning when we look at the scale of needs and opportunities in a country experiencing dramatic development.
Griffith made a clever analogy, comparing the job bank to a bank: bring your qualifications, leave with a job. In theory, this model works.
The CRMA has been operating since 1944, and it understands Guyana’s job market.
The online platform at jobs.gov.gy eliminates geographical barriers and is free to use. The private sector is being involved, and major projects such as the gas-to-energy initiative—now 68 per cent complete and about to hire hundreds more workers at the Wales site—show real demand for Guyanese labour.
However, the minister acknowledged a difficult truth: Guyana has a labour shortage. President Ali made this even clearer in January when he revealed that average attendance at government project sites was below 35 percent in December 2025.
This statistic should concern everyone involved in the country’s growth. You cannot register thousands of vacancies if the culture of showing up, staying on the job, and committing to national productivity is lacking. The job bank can connect workers to employers, but it cannot create the work ethic needed in this country.
This is why the government’s $2.5 billion Budget 2026 allocation for skills training and technical and vocational education needs urgent attention, just like the infrastructure spending it aims to support.
Filling vacancies involves more than matching people to jobs—it requires ensuring those individuals are trained, motivated, and ready to work. Youth unemployment has dropped dramatically from 30.2 percent to 12.1 per cent since 2020, but it remains too high and represents untapped productive potential.
The job bank is a real public benefit, and Griffith deserves recognition for supporting it. However, Guyanese must also participate. With opportunities ranging from entry-level cashier roles to positions on one of the most transformative energy infrastructural projects in the Caribbean, the excuse of “there are no jobs” is no longer valid.
The pressing question is whether Guyanese are ready—in skills, attitude, and commitment—to take advantage of what this moment in history has to offer.
