HOW THE MODERN WORLD WORKS

Aug 28, 2011 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

To pretend is to act as if something is true when in fact we know differently. To deceive ourselves is not to know the truth but to believe that we do.
We can pretend or we can deceive ourselves into believing that we have the skills necessary to run the Skeldon Sugar Factory. The truth will eventually emerge that we do not have the ability to manage the factory or the requisite skills to effectively run the operations.
We do great danger to ourselves when we believe that we have what it takes. Guyana is not awash with skills. There are many highly skilled persons in Guyana but not in the numbers that are required. In many areas, specialized skills are lacking, seriously lacking.
This has nothing to do with the brain drain. We like to deceive ourselves into believing that those skills have migrated. A great deal of the specialists that come from overseas were developed overseas; these skills were not honed in Guyana.
We have a good record of producing bright persons, but for these bright persons to develop high-tech competencies, they have to go where those skills are better harnessed. They have to go overseas. We are not producing anywhere near the level of skilled personnel that we need and therefore Guyana has to look outside for skills.
In the case of the sugar industry, the Minister of Agriculture is not pulling punches when he says we do not have the skills. We probably will never in the next fifty years. That is the reality that we have to face, regardless of who wins the next elections.
If we want to be the best, if we want to have the best skills; we have to send people abroad for training and more so for the relevant experience. You cannot develop a nuclear scientist in Guyana by asking him to repair a donkey cart.
There are many people graduating from school and university in Guyana who believe that they have arrived. They want top jobs with top pay, even though many of them do not have an ounce of experience.
Their ambition must be admired. And they have a lot of persons drumming it into their heads that there are no opportunities in Guyana. Well just pick up the newspapers each day and take a look at the vacancies that are advertised. Then ask some of the employers in the country how hard it is to get skilled persons.
There are children coming out of school with a whole bundle of subjects and when some of them go into the workplace they cannot function. Hundreds of applications are received for jobs and yet employers are not finding persons with the right skills that they need.
Guyanese are overrating themselves. They are pretending that they have what it takes or they are deceiving themselves into believing that they do.
The Skeldon Sugar Factory is the largest factory of its kind in Guyana. There is nothing like that in the country. We are only fooling ourselves into believing that we could run that modern factory on our own. We cannot.
The mistake that was made was that we did not recognize this limitation earlier, even though it was always staring us in the face. When the contract was signed for the construction of the factory, provision should have been made for those building the factory to operate it for a period of three years during which time local engineers would have been trained to take over. It was always asking too much to ask local engineers to run the technology which they are not familiar with.
All over the world this is how technology is transferred. The persons providing the equipment come and run the operations for a specified period of time or train the beneficiary countries in the operations of the plant. We did not do this because we deluded ourselves into believing that we had the skills. We do not and therefore the forthrightness of the Minister of Agriculture must be admired. He has not been embarrassed to admit to the obvious. He is being truthful and honest. We do not have the skills.
Desmond Hoyte recognized this a long time ago when, after locals mismanaged the industry, he hired Booker Tate to take over.
Now that we have a modern factory that is the flagship of the industry, we should not be bothered by having to contract out the management. This happens all over the world.
This is how the world works. You do not have the skills, you recruit them from overseas, and in the process build-in provisions that would eventually allow for locals to be trained.
And if these locals should be trained and then migrate, then you hire more foreign skills. This is how the modern world works.

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