Skills academy to train youths, find jobs – AFC election pledge

Last Updated on Sunday, 27 July 2025, 13:31 by Writer

The Alliance For Change’s (AFC) plan to rescue poor performing secondary school students includes the establishment of a skills academy in each of Guyana’s ten administrative regions to train and place them in oil sector jobs, party leader Nigel Hughes said Saturday.

“We are going to collect all the people, who may not have finished secondary school. We are going to train them in areas that are relevant for the oil and gas industry,” he said.

Addressing the AFC’s first public meeting for the 2025 general election campaign, he told attendees that the plan also envisages placement in other jobs and financial support for graduates to open their own businesses. “For those who want to start their own business, we are going to give them their tools. We will give them funding and we will allow and provide the financial experts to hold their hands at the initial stages of setting up their business,” he told the meeting held at West Front Road, West Ruimveldt.

He said part of the aim is to provide worthwhile opportunities to the estimated 48 percent of school dropouts who would ordinarily not be skilled or semi-skilled, resulting in no work in Guyana’s oil and gas sector. Mr Hughes said the options would then become very limited, leaving those persons to eke out a living on “low-level” jobs or turn to a life of crime.

Unless training of Guyanese youths is ramped up, he said employers would have to bring skilled and semi-skilled workers from overseas. “It means that they are going to bring people into Guyana to do the work and when you sit down in West Front Road, when you sit down in Laing Avenue and the foreigners driving pass you with the fancy SUVs and the Range Rovers and you look at them and you ask yourselves ‘why my children sweeping the road in this oil rich country and all the foreigners driving through and only that small set of supporters from the People’s Progressive Party driving fancy cars?’, you will turn around and ask yourself and ask God ‘is what happened to me?'” he said.

The Guyana government has been lamenting that the country is facing a labour shortage and would soon have to craft a migration policy.

In addition to the several publicly-owned technical institutes and the Guyana Industrial Training Centre, the Ministry of Labour’s Board of Industrial Training trains youths in a wide range of technical, skilled and semi-skilled areas.

Meanwhile, the AFC Leader said his party in government would be providing a house lot to each Guyanese on attaining the age of 18.