With Guyana currently undergoing an unprecedented wave of development, the Guyana Government is grappling with the need to fill critical capacity deficiencies while at the same time finding employment opportunities for Guyanese.
This was related by Vice President Dr Bharrat Jagdeo who noted that the matter of labour shortages is something which has to be carefully examined.
“Already we are seeing in some parts of the country, severe labour shortages, particularly for some types of skills. So there has to be a time when, if we want to keep growing at the pace that we are growing, without it becoming too inflationary and counterproductive that we will have to import labour and we may have to do it in a sensible way at the beginning so that it doesn’t compete with local,” the Vice President explained.
He was at the time speaking during a diaspora talk show on Thursday evening.
“It’s hard to find, even for the housing sector now, carpenters and construction people in many areas. You may have to allow them [companies], if they want to bring in 500 Mexicans to work on this project, complete it and then leave. So, you may have to allow it because if you don’t, and you take labour from the existing market, then what happens is the prices go up and you have scarcity, and it would affect your capital programmes.”
Only late last year, the business community in Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne) complained about a shortage of labour and the significant impact it is having on their operations.
But several labourers had refuted the claims, contending that the private sector needs to offer employees more than just a salary but other attractive benefits as well.
According to the Vice President, it is a sensitive issue.
“So, it’s a very sensitive area because you don’t want to do it in a way where a man is still looking for a job – say a displaced sugar worker or maybe a bauxite worker – and then he sees you bringing in somebody right away to take a job… It’s a balancing act and we’re very conscious of the need to not overheat the economy; we’re very conscious of our people still, in some areas, being unemployed and we’re very conscious about the need to do something to ensure that we keep our capital programmes going. So, it’s between these three variables that often you have to make these decisions.”
It was previously announced by the government that a total of 8000 temporary jobs will be created countrywide to help families cope with the rising cost of living.
