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Govt. should address salaries to keep skilled workforce – Aubery Norton
Leader of the Opposition, Aubrey Norton
Kaieteur News – The Government of Guyana (GoG) must offer competitive salaries to Guyanese to avoid losing its skilled labour force to the oil and gas sector.
This is according to Leader of the Opposition, Aubrey Norton. He was at the time responding to a question from this newspaper when he provided his suggestions to address the situation.
Norton was keen to note that while he holds the view that professionals have a right to work in whichever industry they prefer, there are methods that can be implemented to ensure the skilled workers continue to provide service for the development of their country, rather than advance the profits of private organizations.
He explained that a key element to ensure the public sector is adequately managed is continuous training. Norton pointed out, “I said before at press conferences one of the failures of the government is that they are not training enough people to have the technical competence to deal with the oil and gas sector, that Guyana is now an oil and gas country, there should have been far more training so that you have a wider pool of persons to select from.”
Moreover, the Leader argued that the administration is also failing to address the issue of adequate compensation for skilled professionals. “One expects that those persons would be in demand but also the government is failing to address the question of salaries. If you pay the pittance you pay, why do you believe professionals will stay with you when Exxon is offering more? We have to make the salaries competitive,” he contended.
On Thursday, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo during his weekly press conference said that both the private sector and state agencies have complained about losing its employees to the rapidly developing sector.
He noted that while the private sector has complained about losing its “people at the bottom” such as cleaners to the public sector since they receive better salaries, the government is losing its skilled workers to the petroleum industry.
Government has however made it clear that it does not have yolks on its people and will not prevent them from taking better paying jobs. “We don’t have serfdom in this country. We share the philosophy that you can’t bind people to a job because you want cheap labour. We have to equip as many of our people to get better paying jobs so they can improve themselves and the lives of their families so if someone has a better job offer, we’re not North Korea to say you have to stay here,” he said.
Jagdeo continued, “They get a better offer, they make their own decisions, they move. In as much as we are unhappy about it because that person, a Guyanese person is improving his or her own life and that should be the objective of the individual and the government too.”
With the discovery of oil and gas, and subsequent commencement of production activities in the Stabroek Block, the skilled labour force has been drawn away by more attractive salaries, leaving a serious dent in the local labour market.
This has shifted the country’s growth prospective in light of the numerous vacancies in a number of key areas. The Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) for example, the body tasked with conducting audits of the petroleum companies, had complained that the trained auditors were leaving to join the oil and gas sector. The Commissioner General had pointed out that while 65 persons were required for the job, only 31 persons were on roll in August 2023.
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