The Guyana Government is considering importing skilled labour to meet the growing local demand, President Dr Irfaan Ali shared on Tuesday.
“We’re actively addressing this issue. Over the long-term, and as our economy grows further, we will have to look towards the importation of skilled labour,” the Head of State remarked during the Private Sector Commission’s Annual General Meeting.
“The private sector has complained about difficulties in sourcing skilled labour. We’ve envisaged that this problem would have arisen, but we had not catered for it arising at the pace at which it has arisen,” President Ali admitted.
“Given the pace of economic development, particularly in massive transformative projects, which are being undertaken, including within the private sector, it was expected that there would have been an increase demand for skilled labour…upon assuming office, we took steps to begin to train persons, but clearly, now the rate of development has outstripped the rate of new skilled entrants into the labour market,” he explained.
According to the Guyanese leader, “our population is much too small to sustain an economy which is tripled in size in recent years. The issue of skilled labour has to be further discussed with both the private sector and labour as a matter of urgency.”
President Ali also addressed the ripple effects of this ongoing labour shortage, wherein the cost of skilled labour has exponentially increased as a result.
“We’re also keenly aware that the shortage of labour has led to an increase in the cost of skilled labour, and we’re concerned that this could lead to increases in project cost. We’re equally concerned about the steep rise as a result of imported inflation, in construction material. We’ve made all the adjustments that the government could possibly make to address this issue,” he expressed.
“This is a direct result of not only the increased demand but also the problems in global supply chain. We’re looking at this matter closely,” the President went on to assure.
This is not the first time that the government has touted the need to import skilled labour. In May 2022, Vice President Dr Bharrat Jagdeo had addressed the issue, remarking that it is a “balancing act”.
“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 don’t compete with local,” Jagdeo had reasoned.
“You may have to allow [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.”
“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.”
