Guyana’s capacity to train occupational safety and health professionals has been boosted with the commissioning of the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Centre of Excellence at the New Amsterdam Technical Institute (NATI), the first centre of its kind for the CVQ Level 3 Occupational Safety and Health Programme in Guyana and the Caribbean.
The Centre, commissioned on Friday, will serve as the official home of the CVQ Level 3 Occupational Safety and Health Programme, providing practical training, applied learning, field-based exercises and competency development.
It is intended to produce more highly trained OSH professionals, upgrade the skills of persons already working in the field and strengthen the capacity of institutions, while positioning Guyana as a hub for occupational safety and health training in the wider Caribbean.
The Centre was established with support from the Greater Guyana Initiative (GGI), in partnership with the Ministry of Education, the Council for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (CTVET) and LearnCorp International.
The GGI is a 10-year, US$100 million (G$20 billion) investment by the Stabroek Block co-venturers to support capacity building in education and training, economic development and health.
Speaking on behalf of GGI, ExxonMobil Guyana President Alistair Routledge said protecting workers goes beyond an imperative and represents a moral obligation to keep colleagues and oneself safe.
The Centre, he explained, will train persons at the CVQ Level 3 to become trainers, technicians and educators who can take that knowledge directly into workplaces.
“And that is where the risk is. It is not in the classroom. It’s in the workplace,” Routledge said. He added that the objective is to give young people the culture and tools needed to enter workplaces across Guyana and help people remain safe and healthy.
Meanwhile, Education Minister Sonia Parag said the Centre’s reach is not intended to be confined to Berbice, noting that it will support technical skills development nationally while the intention is for it to become a regional hub.
“This is going to support our technical skills nationally, and it’s also going to become a regional hub, and that’s where we want to take it,” Parag said.
The Minister placed the development within Government’s wider focus on improving the quality of education, with Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) providing greater flexibility for Guyanese to acquire skills.
On the other hand, Minister of Labour and Manpower Planning Keoma Griffith stressed the human consequences of inadequate workplace safety, saying occupational safety and health should not be treated merely as a policy or legislative requirement.
“Every workplace accident is one too many. Every workplace injury is one too many. And every workplace fatality is one too many,” Griffith declared.
He said behind every statistic is a human being, while every workplace fatality leaves a family whose life is permanently changed. Likewise, he said a serious injury can affect a worker’s ability to earn, provide for a family and, in some instances, live a normal life.
“Every person who goes to work each morning has a reasonable expectation of returning home safely in the evening. Protecting that expectation is not merely a policy objective or a legislative obligation. It is a moral responsibility and a fundamental part of decent work,” the Labour Minister said.
Griffith stressed, however, that responsibility for occupational safety and health does not rest with Government alone. Workers, employers, supervisors, business owners and directors, contractors and suppliers all have responsibilities for maintaining safe workplaces.
“Workplace safety is therefore an interlinked chain of responsibility, and the strength of that chain is determined by its weakest link,” he said.
Against the backdrop of Guyana’s rapidly expanding economy and workforce, Griffith said more persons must be trained, and the quality of that training improved. He described Friday’s commissioning as an important step in building the country’s capacity to respond to that need.
The Centre, he said, will allow Guyana to produce more highly trained occupational safety and health professionals, upgrade the skills of those already in the field and strengthen institutional capacity.
“It means that Guyana can become not merely a country that talks about workplace safety, but a country that builds the human capacity to practise it,” Griffith said.
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