Wanting to better position themselves to take advantage of the opportunities in Guyana’s fairly new oil and gas sector has led to over 56 seamen, from the county of Berbice, being duped into doing an oil and gas training.
The men are being told that the certificate they received is fake.
The seamen told Inews that they saw an advertisement for training and recruiting by an agency for an oil company in Guyana and responded. It was related that the school offering the courses is located in New Amsterdam and had advertised two courses for applicants.
Those courses were the Standards of Training Certification and Watchkeeping (STCW) and Lifting and Banksman course. To complete the course, applicants were required to pay a total fee of $260,000 for the two courses.
One of the affected seamen, Odwin Sinclair of Khotbradt, East Bank Berbice, said that he along with several other seamen did the courses in January 2020 and were told they would have to wait six weeks before they are issued with the certificates. At the end of that period, when they revisited the school, they were told that the certificates would arrive shortly.
“So, with that information, I went to Transport and Harbour Department [to see] how long it would take for them to issue me with a discharge book; that is a document to sail upon receiving this STCW certificate. So, they enquired where I got the certificate from, so, I told them and they told me that there is only one accredited school in Guyana authorised to transact seaman’s affairs and that is a school in Georgetown – no one else. So, with that information, I went to the police station and made a report,” Sinclair related.
Along with Sinclair, several others made reports to the Police on March 12, 2020.
In fact, a total of 56 persons would have been part of five different classes and would have completed training after paying in excess of $150,000 each.
The seamen said they were promised that the school and its collaborating oil and gas employment agency would also find jobs for them – either in the industry or at sea.
“We called to Panama to enquire whether the school have been authorised by them and the company said that the particular school is not authorised. We have emails from the company showing that the school is not authorised,” Sinclair, who was part of a group of eight seamen, told this publication.
According to Sinclair, they have also been shown copies of a ‘certificate’ which does not represent the courses they paid for.
Meanwhile, Carlos Reid, 31, of Sanvoort, West Canje, said he decided to get the Police involved after not getting satisfactory answers from the school.
“Six weeks had passed and we did not collect a certificate and she [the proprietor] keep dodging us and not answering her phone and giving lame excuses, so, we [got] worried. We did a background check and the company told us via email that the certificate is not valid and is fake. So, when we told her that we don’t want that certificate she told us that the certificate is legit and it is higher than the one that we need,” Reid explained.
Additionally, Gary Darlington, who paid $165,000 to the school for the two courses, said he has so far been refunded $70,000.
Darlington said that was part of the money he used to pay for the courses from an agency which is situated in Georgetown and he has since received his certificates.
When contacted, head of the school and collaborating oil and gas employment agency (name provided) told this publication that the Panama accredited school could only have issued the certificates during the pandemic if it started as online courses.
The woman said that all of the transactions the school/agency is involved in are legitimate, adding that the certificate the seamen want to be issued with will become useless in five years and the one she is recommending to them is the only one which will soon be recognised.
