A disappointing forum

Jan 14, 2019 Letters

Dear Editor,
I would like to express my disappointment with the manner in which young people were treated at the Oil and Gas Forum conducted by the Department of Youth at the Umana Yana on 12th January.
I am all for educating all Guyanese to the opportunities and possibilities that come with our addition of oil production to our economic sector. What we were treated to was an exercise in poorly staged propaganda, an attempt to show new found love for youth by the APNU/AFC.
The presentations young Guyanese were treated to were replete with vague language, hyper-inflated figures and esoteric details. “This industry is capital intensive, prosperous people profit from problems. Do not chase after the dollar, chase after your dreams, $680 million USD spent in 2018 by the oil companies, too many oil refineries in the world.”
The question on almost every participant’s lip was job related, what jobs were available now? Who would the oil companies have to hire based on local content requirements? Jobs? Jobs? Jobs?
The answers were not helpful, with no plan to build a refinery, means very few jobs. I would have liked an in-depth analysis of this position, telling us that Trinidad just closed its 40-year-old refinery is not pertinent information.
For 40 years, Trinidad & Tobago’s refinery was a driving force in a vibrant booming economy. Indeed, reports that I have read state that it was making profit up to its closure. This was typical of the answers provided, short, uncertain and often vague speculation.
There will be another of these thinly disguised APNU/AFC campaign events on 19th January at the sports hall, and many more young people seeking answers about opportunity in the oil and gas sector will be treated to this song and dance routine.
Editor, young people like music. Yes, we sing ‘strangle me and tie me up’ but this is not what we mean. More hope was found under the tents of the Movie Towne job fair, a project enabled by the PPPC for which Winston Brassington has been charged for selling land at $18 million an acre, in part of an area that the PNC tried to sell at $25,000 per acre, than here at the impressive sounding Oil and Gas forum.
This is a government bereft of vision or knowledge; they cannot shed light on which they themselves do not understand.
Yours truly
Vickram Bharrat
PPP/C Member of Parliament

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