Greenidge says skill services are future of Guyana’s development

Guyana’s development lies not in “being able to produce a billion tonnes of anything” but in being able to provide “skill intensive services” to both the local and international community, Minister of Foreign Affairs Carl Greenidge said yesterday.

“Services like doing analysis of scientific phenomenon, whether analysing soil samples from Bosai and Hess, that work is critical… for a country with such a small population. It is especially important that we groom our human resources so that they can master such services and sell them to the community,” Greenidge told those gathered at the 25th anniversary celebration of Ground Structures Engineering Consultants Incorporated (GSEC).

GSEC, which is owned and managed by Charles Ceres, provides consultancy services in the areas of Geo-technical Engineering, Ground Water Hydrology and Environmental Compliance for companies such as GuySuCo, Guyana Goldfields and Guyana Water Incorporated.

The company, on the occasion of its 25th anniversary, has also moved into a new 10,000 square feet office, at Liliendaal, the construction of which was pegged at approximately US$8 million.

Ceres told the event that his brand entails commitment to development of Guyana and its young people.

He noted that in offering soil and material laboratory training to young Guyanese, GSEC has asked only that they be selfstarters who are humble enough to learn. This philosophy has taken the company from a staff of three to 33 over the last 25 years, with a large number of those employed being offered opportunities to learn and develop their skills both in Guyana and around the world. In fact, several members of staff are currently deployed in the United States, with another three set to go to Houston Texas in the new week.

Greenidge, who delivered the feature address, congratulated Ceres on having taken a set of highly technical skills and packaged them in to an enterprise which now sells data, data analysis services and other forms of analytical services.

He stressed that throughout history certain types of products and services have served as a stimulus to development. The minister argued that in today’s highly technological environment, “it isn’t a specific enterprises that matter but the characterization of these enterprises” and specifically “services of a highly technical nature which are the current catalyst for development.”