Heavy focus on skilled labour as National TVET Policy launched

A 10-year policy to improve Guyana’s technical education sector was launched on Wednesday at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre, Liliendaal.

The Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Policy aims to empower Guyanese with the highest quality of vocational skills to foster innovation, sustainability and gender inclusion. The policy is intended to address the challenge of limited skilled labour in Guyana. It will further modernise technical and vocational education through technology while supporting the development of high demand skills in industries like the oil and gas and construction sectors.

The new policy will bring together various ministries and other agencies with the establishment of a single autonomous national institution to improve the sector’s governance. This will also allow for better coordination with the private sector on skills needed to align the workforce of the country with the rapid evolving economy.

The policy was designed by the Ministry of Education in collaboration with the World Bank.

World Bank Director for Human Development for Latin America and the Caribbean, Jaime Saaverda described the policy as transformative.

“The pace of in this economy is gigantic and that dynamic growth creates a unique opportunity to ensure that our training programmes are both high quality and highly pertinent and aligns with the needs we see in industries and this new policy is doing precisely that,” Saaverda said.

He said the policy will support equitable access for everyone in Guyana to be trained specifically persons who would not have completed their secondary education.

“We need to make sure all young people in Guyana will have the opportunity to have high quality education after secondary. Some will chose a university, some will chose a technical education but in all those cases it must be an education that enrich your skills,” the World Bank Director stated.

Minister of Education Priya Manickchand during her remarks highlighted the scarcity of skilled persons in Guyana.

“Here in Guyana, in the ministry, we are searching high and low for engineers or even clerks of work, with certain skillset, we are searching for plumbers and masons, and electricians or even persons who have apprenticeship in those so that we can maintain schools in a way we want to maintain schools, now that is only the ministry of education,” Manickchand stated while noting this is the situation for all government ministries and even the private sector.

“We will have to, at some point perhaps to import skills before we grow out those skills if we are to grow the Guyana that we want to grow at the pace that we want to develop,” Manickchand said.

The minister pointed out that while it was a struggle to get to the launch of the policy, that this is only just the beginning.

“I want to say to the implementers of this policy that this is the beginning. Implementing this is where we have to make sure we don’t get lazy, make sure we don’t have changes,” Manickchand said.