GuySuCo’s Apprentice Training Centre to be kept open, curriculum for expansion
The Guyana Sugar Corporation’s Port Mourant Apprentice Training Centre will not be closed or divested as government is currently working to take account of the needs of the oil industry in its curriculum.
“Essentially, I would like to see how government can support this important institution so it can remain relevant in the changing times… and not become obsolete,” Minister Natural Resources Raphael Trotman yesterday told Stabroek News from Berbice, where he visited the school.
“There is much offshore activity in the waters near the Guyana/Suriname border and in Suriname itself so the belief is that Berbice can be a critical region for the provision of goods and services,” he added.
Expressing concern about the fate of the sugar industry here, Sunday Stabroek columnist Ian Mc Donald, in a recent letter, said he expected that the “regionally acclaimed, world-class” Centre will continue “to be wellstaffed and fully operational and even expanded to meet retraining needs and the national hunger for more and more technical skills.”
“It is essential that this part of the industry is of there was going to be a positive outcome,” he said.
Trotman said that he feels a personal sense of obligation to the Berbice community, given that he himself hails from that county. “Being a Berbician myself, I feel a personal sense of responsibility to ensure that the development is shared here as much as it is with other regions,” he said.
Berbice has been hard hit by the recent closure of sugar estates there.
The government had been strongly criticized for allowing the severing of the over 4,000 corporation workers without having options in place for them or evaluating the social impact of the job losses on their communities. It had also been pilloried on its unpreparedness to pay severance immediately to all the workers. Of the 4,763 severed workers, 1,851 are from the Skeldon Estate and 1,181 from Rose Hall.