Vice President Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo on Thursday made it clear that the only qualification for the government’s part-time jobs initiative is to be Guyanese.
The Vice President was at the time responding to queries from the People’s National Congress Reform (PNC/R) about the qualifications of the programme.
He also clarified that the initiative will continue for a number of years.
The Vice President, who was speaking at the official launch of the initiative in Region Six, called on the beneficiaries to use the opportunity as a stepping stone to finding better jobs.
He said the initiative, in the short term, would benefit thousands of Guyanese.
The Vice President called on them to disregard the negative utterances by the Opposition, explaining that the economic policies of the APNU+AFC are inimical to the interests of the people, deeming those policies as “retrogressive.”
The VP noted that “The policy was not helpful to job creation when taxes were introduced on electricity and water, machinery and equipment. We thought that was counterproductive and that is what affected the economy.”
According to Dr Jagdeo, under the APNU+AFC, some 35,000 jobs were lost even before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. He said after the pandemic hit and the country was shut down, another 35,000 to 40,000 jobs were lost.
The PPP/C government, the VP noted, had to quickly implement a strategy to deal with the job loss, as well as the rising cost of living, brought on by the pandemic and exacerbated by the Russia/Ukraine war.
He also encouraged them to take advantage of the opportunity to study and upgrade themselves, making reference to the Guyana Online Academy of Learning (GOAL) scholarships.
“We expect all of you who are on the programme to utilise the other opportunities provided by the Government of Guyana to study, to upgrade yourself, because any person who wants to do an online scholarship from this group or anywhere in the country, the government will pay for their studies, ” he told the large gathering.
Close to 3,000 persons in the region are benefitting from the initiative. (Extracted and modified from DPI)
