Govt finalising human capital strategy to tackle labour shortages – Pres. Ali

As the country undergoes unprecedented economic growth, the Guyana Government is in the process of finalising a comprehensive human capital strategy to tackle the ongoing labour shortage.

This is according to President Dr Irfaan Ali who on Friday appeared on British podcast – The Rest Is Politics: Leading with Alastair Campbell, where he highlighted the labour shortages issue in the country.

“Culturally from a work perspective, although I believe that our work culture is shifting because of the growth of the economy, which is good also, you know…we are now incentivising two jobs so that you get tax breaks on your second job. And that is because for the growth that is taking place, we don’t have the size of the labour force, the human resource capital is just too small to fuel this growth that is taking place,” the president outlined.

To tackle this labour shortage, the Head of State revealed that his government is now in the final stages of completing a human capital strategy and a major focus of this initiative is tapping into the diaspora.

“That’s a big part of the strategy. So, we are now finalising that human capital strategy, which is linked to the migration strategy and the type of human capital that we need,” he noted.

One category of workers that Guyana is facing a shortage in is healthcare professionals.

“The world is going through a crisis in healthcare. For example, nurses are moving around globally. In the UK, the UK is recruiting heavily. In the Caribbean, in Guyana, we’ve all suffered from that. So, we have that those same challenges, because we are building out a modern healthcare system that requires specialists, requires specializations and certain quality of nurses. So, whilst we are building out our capacity to train nurses, pharmacists, technologists, doctors, to meet this future requirement, in the medium term we will have and we have major shortages and we have been recruiting. So, we’re now finalising this human capital strategy that will be used to structure the education system to deliver what we want now and for the future. But also, to examine the gap that exists,” the president stated.