By Fareeza Haniff in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago
The Prime Minister of the Republic of Korea, Han Duck-soo, on Tuesday, offered to expand and increase training programmes for Guyanese in Korea.
During a meeting with Guyana’s President, Dr Irfaan Ali at the sidelines of the CARICOM Heads of Government meeting being held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Port of Spain, the Korean Prime Minister acknowledged the importance that Guyana has placed on education.
“Our government is trying to increase the cooperation in the exchange of students for training in Korea if they want. We will make it more specific to a particular country or we can group some countries together, and we will arrange and prepare some of the special educational programmes for a particular country or some countries in a group so there’s some kind of custom-tailored educational cooperation between Guyana and Korea,” the Prime Minister said.
He added that the cooperation between the two countries is “diverse” and so, the Republic of Korea is looking to “cement” its cooperative agenda with countries in the Caribbean.
In this regard, the Prime Minister reminded President Ali that his government has already submitted to Guyana a draft framework of economic cooperation.
“I hope that your department would review that as quickly as possible so that we can make it more institutionalized.”
Meanwhile, President Ali emphasized that the two countries are already cooperating in many areas and he reminded the Prime Minister that Guyana is now heavily focused on addressing the issues of climate, energy and food security.
Commending Korea for its “highly skilled and developed human resource asset,” President Ali said Guyana hopes to strengthen ties in this area.
“…the level of technology, research and development, digitization, automation, that you’ve gone through and we look forward to strengthening our relationship in having these scientific, technological and electronic technology transfer to our country and to our people. So, support in that area is critical.”
The Guyanese leader also pointed to Korea’s “huge footprint” in the manufacturing sector, industrial development, and agro-processing, noting that Guyana is seeking to explore opportunities in this regard.
“[I] would like for us to open up opportunities from a government to government, private sector to private sector variable so that we can have these opportunities that will come on stream examined by not only the government but your private sector so that they can be part of this transformation.
“It is in this context that I think our engagement is critical,” President Ali contended.
