Professor Ivelaw Griffith, Vice Chancellor of the University of Guyana in his presentation at the Oil and Gas Lecture on Thursday evening, underscored the importance of long-term planning and education in preparation for this emerging sector.
Managing some of the expected and unexpected challenges, Professor Griffith said would pose some difficulties to the government. He warned officials not to neglect the other sectors, citing this as a similar error by Trinidad and Tobago, which has a booming Oil and Gas sector.
The Professor pointed to three educational categories among them Technical and managerial and Governance and Civic education. “As part of the educational preparation it behooves us to pay attention to what I would call some of the pathologies that tend to come with oil, whether we like it or not, crime will increase, whether we like it or not prostitution will increase. Oil and other forms of wealth have a way of testing a nation’s and peoples moral fortitude and you have to embrace all the elements to manage that aspect,” he posited.
Minister of Natural Resources, Raphael Trotman informed the gathering that President David Granger and Trinidad and Tobago’s Energy Minister met and agreed on cooperation and collaboration in five areas, namely, Education, infrastructural development, Oil and gas development, Eco -tourism and agriculture.
He noted that “since the discovery in May of 2015, the government has been working very assiduously and steadily to prepare the country for the inevitability of becoming an oil and gas producing nation, we’ve held seminars, workshops, we’ve attended conferences and symposia, we have been on training…we have collaborated with the US government, Canadian government, Mexican government, the EU, the Commonwealth Secretariat …this lecture is a part of a series of events of nation building and capacity building.”
Professor Andrew Jupiter, Chairman of Petrotrin Board of Directors underscored the importance of the creation and nurturing of intellectual capital to add value to the economy.
