Guysuco’s Port Mourant Training Centre has added another 47 artisans to the local job market through its Apprentice Training Programme which has so far produced some 2,000 graduates since it was initiated in 1957.

At the end of the four-year training programme 80 percent of the 47 apprentices, including one female, drawn from the corporation’s estates countrywide gained distinctions with the remaining 20 percent obtaining credits in six disciplines. Chairman of the corporation’s Board of Directors, Vic Oditt had a word of caution for the graduating class: “You are graduating at a time when there are serious challenges to our sugar industry, internationally, regionally and locally. You are therefore embarking on an interesting and challenging era in your life, going out to the estates to prove yourselves as competent and capable employees of this noble corporation.”

Minister of Fisheries, Crops and Livestock, Satyadeow Sawh, delivering the feature address three days after assuming the portfolio of agriculture, also noted that “the sugar industry faces many challenges in an increasingly competitive global trade environment and needs to urgently improve its productivity to compete successfully.”

Emphasis, he said, “will have to be placed on adequately training our human resources to produce persons who are highly skilled in the sciences of production, business and marketing. It is in this context that Guysuco’s training programmes must be seen.”

According to Sawh “this is clearly a time of great change in the sugar industry and therefore the need for trained personnel is greater than ever.” Government, he said, is well aware of the challenges ahead and will take all measures to ensure not only the survival of the industry but to guarantee that the appropriate environment continues to exist for its further development.

“The challenge at the level of the World Trade Organisation by Brazil, Australia and Thailand to the European sugar regime through which we access markets for sugar in Europe at preferential prices, threatens the profitability of our sugar industry,” he said. “We have however been able to significantly increase our servicing of the Caricom market.”

His concerns were echoed by Oditt: “We are monitoring the situation very carefully, we recently sent lobby missions to Brazil and the issue is on our front burner as we consider the ramifications. Locally the pressures are also somewhat intense as we constantly struggle with exchange rates between the Euro and the US dollar; the desire of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) to close the Demerara Estates; the loss of skills to migration and drainage and irrigation issues out of our control.” The chairman and the Board of Directors however view these challenges not as obstacles but opportunities. “We can reduce our cost of production to 11 US cents per pound, we are reducing the cost of production at our Demerara Estates and we are encouraged locally by the fact that the Euro has strengthened significantly against the US dollar,” Oditt told the gathering.

Scores of parents, guardians, apprentices and senior Guysuco employees filled the centre’s auditorium to capacity to witness what Personnel Director, Lakeram Singh described as an “annual ritual”.

Sawh said everyone should “work together in identifying the most cost effective means of improving productivity while ensuring that the human needs of all the industry’s participants continue to be met.

This is most important as we seek new ways of organising production and marketing appropriately for this period of globalisation and liberalisation of trade.”

“We must harness our intellectual strength to fashion a future for this most important industry,” he urged.

The minister also called on the class to “see their future in the context of not only earning a salary but in terms of generating the creativity and innovation required to transform the industry into one which will serve as a model for the world and which will yield increasing returns for ourselves and our children”.

Guysuco Chief Executive, Michael Boast in brief remarks noted that the training centre has a worldwide reputation as a top producer of artisans and urged the graduands to maintain and carry on this reputation and tradition.

Disclosing that construction work on the Skeldon Estate has commenced, the CEO said it will be the most modern in the world and will be highly automated. “The training level however is not yet up to the technical needs of the factory,” he pointed out, adding that “for us to become a world-class producer, world-class artisans will be needed in our factories.”

The centre’s curriculum will be extended this year to include a Diploma in Agriculture in collaboration with the Guyana School of Agriculture.

Copping the prestigious Watson Memorial Award this year was second-year apprentice in the Agricultural and Auto-Mechanical Section, Oswin Lynch of LBI Estate. He also received a prize for Best Performance in his section which was donated by Blairmont Estate. The lone female was Radhica Singh who obtained a Credit as an auto-electrician.

Manager of the centre, Floyd Scott, in his report called on the batch to take advantage of what the tertiary institutions have to offer. “Continue to develop yourself personally and professionally,” he urged. “The global market is opening and the job market is becoming more competitive...prepare yourself. Your future success depends very much on adopting the right attitude, applying self-discipline and motivation and on performing at consistently high standards in the workplace.”

The class included one sugar boiler, Andrew Tulsie of Blairmont who completed a course in sugar processing.