Guyana is looking to recruit foreign labour as the country experiences what President Dr. Irfaan Ali described as ‘monumental growth’.
Ali told the Saint Lucia business community that his country’s economy grew by nearly 40 percent in 2023.
In addition, Guyana expects continued double-digit growth in the coming years.
However, the resource-rich South American country has a labour shortage.
As a result, President Ali told an extraordinary Saint Lucia Chamber of Commerce, Industry, and Agriculture luncheon that his country is seeking foreign workers.
“We have to capitalise fully on the regional labour, and then we have the huge diaspora that I think will return in a very, very strong way,” the President told local business people.
He cited several reasons for his conclusion, including the skills of Guyanese living overseas.
“You have a lot of teachers, nurses and so on,” Ali noted.
He indicated that the benefits Guyana would offer those individuals would be highly competitive compared to anywhere else, providing a great incentive to return home.
The Guyana leader revealed an acute shortage in his country’s medical field that needs thousands of nurses.
As a result, Guyana is offering free training for any Guyanese who wants to enter that field, a stipend during training, and a guarantee of employment.
In addition, President Ali said his country was retraining and retooling single mothers and housewives and returning them to work, creating disposable family income.
He explained that disposable income growth in the family augments community income, resulting in an exponential increase in the national disposable income.
“Disposable income drives spending, spending drives demand, demand drives supply and the whole economy trickles itself into aggression,” Ali told private sector officials.
Good news !
Decrease of poverty !
Peep can you say that
Interesting. Very interesting. From the 90s onward our Saint Lucian people particularly in a government department where I worked for a number of years, acted like “Guyanese” was a dirty word.
I ceaselessly pointed out that many of those coming here had Saint Lucian roots. I understood also that it was no different in some other Caribbean islands. They were consistently treated as the lowest of the low.
Today the pendulum has swung the other way. Guyana is once again recruiting foreign labor.
Will the Saint Lucians and other Caribbean nationals who go there to work now experience the same as was meted out to them? Only time will tell.
Interestingly, as has been noted on this forum over and over again, economic growth that benefits the people is the only solution to the dire state of affairs in Saint Lucia. Not religion, not party politics but ecomony ecomony ecomony….it’s the ecomony stupid!!!!….Now you will see a reverse flow of Guyanese going back to their homeland leaving Saint Lucia high and dry and I don’t blame them…some of my best friends were and are Guyanese, the best mathematics teacher I had was a Guyanese. They are well educated and skilled….you will also see Guyana creating highly skilled jobs in tech, fintech and join the likes of Singapore, Taiwan and Malaysia…..when your government don’t have a clue and they behave like infants in adult bodies, then you see how their inexcusable behaviour affects the nation….Pierre take a leave from the Guyanese book and learn something. You sorry excuses for politicians have failed Saint Lucia miserably having a Noble Laureate who formulated ecomonic theories which other nations employed and yet you clowns fail to implement or maximise his legacy and put Saint Lucia on a solid footing by adopting his ecomonic theories….by now every child from secondary school level education should be taught , be able to name and explain Sir Arthur Lewis’s ecomonic theories….but nope….the blind so called politicians don’t see the benefit in this….while our kids are on the internet and social media learning all kinds of stuff inappropriate for their age. No wonder we are in the state we are at this present moment…SLP, UWP, PLP…all of them are a bunch of hopeless clowns and I will continue to harshly criticise them until they do well by Saint Lucia….
@ C-wiz big up. Drill reality into their skulls
You can have all St. Lucian people that have Indian, European or Syrian ancestry. Honourable Pierre, Frederick and Alva must make St. Lucia only for African descendants as they have promised us. Guy and Chastenet should have been excluded from power. Great Africans like Mugabe and Idi Amin would have never allowed this. Honourable Richard is our proud version of Idi Amin.
And that’s a fact.. let’s capitalize and establish a new era… And this will provide work for the young Men with vision..