No one seems to care

Apr 30, 2014 Editorial

The majority of our skilled people are migrating, and not only does this not augur well for the future, but it means that the country is getting less for its investment in human development; training people is a very costly exercise.
For as long as we could remember we have been producing our own teachers, nurses, skilled artisans and the like. Such was our training regimen that all those who graduated were good enough to work in any part of the world.
There was a time when the cost of living was such that we were content to stay and serve. But there was always the lure of life overseas. That lure now has so many of us leaving that we cannot train people fast enough and even those we train are never good enough because their foundation was rather weak. Things had even reached the stage where we were forced to lower the entrance qualifications to our top learning institutions.
What makes it worse is that all those who leave seem to have very good reasons. People can now say that they left because of the crime situation. In the past they said that they were running from a dictatorship. Some even left because, as they said, they were the victims of discrimination.
What we do not hear a lot of is the migration of people because they are dissatisfied with the pay. This was the talk for most of the time as recruiters came from every part of the world to solicit skilled people from Guyana.
Our decision-makers are wise enough to realise that they cannot stop the outward flow of the skilled people. They also say that they cannot match the financial rewards offered elsewhere. But there must be something that we could do.
It is a given fact that we do not have the money to recruit foreign skills to replace those that we have lost. Other countries have been able to secure foreign funding to help them replace the lost skills and the people from those countries do not migrate in the numbers like we have been doing.
It has been recognised that foreign aid cannot develop a country, but foreign investment would. Foreign investment would also help reduce the brain drain but there must be something that the government must do. It must allow the foreign investor to pay the kind of wages that the investor feels is real.
The government often dictated to the investor the kind of money that he/she should pay to avoid a conflict within the society. What is considered a fair pay in most societies would be seen as super salaries in Guyana, given the low value of our currency.
But even before the investors come, a lot has to happen. One of the things is political stability. By no stretch of imagination can we say that we have a stable political climate in Guyana. Every time it seems as though something is going to happen to make the climate stable someone or some event serves to widen the rift between the parties.
More recently, the various parties have been accusing each other of exposing the country to potentially crippling international sanctions. Common ground is not being reached on anti-money laundering legislation and we seem resigned to our fate.
Whatever the case, one can expect a prolonged bout of hostility, especially between the two main parties. This will do no good for political stability and certainly no foreign investor is going to come. Without these foreign investors the economy is going to slide further downhill and our skilled persons would continue to leave at an alarmingly high rate. What is most worrying is that no one seems to be doing anything to effect a change in our condition. No one seems to care.

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