From Port Mourant to the world PMTC Alumni Association in NYC credit Guyana’s premier apprenticeship school for life-changing career paths

By Andrew Carmichael

On a warm Saturday afternoon in Queens, New York, United States of America, the aroma of freshly grilled fish mingled with the sound of laughter as old friends embraced, shared memories, and reminisced about a place that, for many of them, changed the course of their lives.
They came from different parts of Guyana and from different graduating classes. Some first walked through the gates of the Port Mourant Training Centre (PMTC) more than five decades ago, while others enrolled years later. Their careers eventually took them across Guyana and thousands of miles away to North America, but despite the passing of time, they remain bound by a common experience.

For the members of the Port Mourant Training Centre New York Alumni Association, an annual fish fry is far more than a social gathering. It is a celebration of an institution that they say equipped them not only with technical skills but also with the discipline, confidence and work ethic that enabled them to build successful careers both at home and abroad.
As Guyana prepares to mark the 70th anniversary of the institution next year, the alumni gathering also served as a reminder of the enduring legacy of a school that has quietly shaped generations of craftsmen, technicians, engineers and industry leaders.
For many of those in attendance, returning each year is about honouring that legacy and ensuring that today’s apprentices receive some of the support that they themselves once benefited from.
Leading that effort is the Port Mourant Training Centre New York Alumni Association, which has spent the past decade raising funds to assist students currently enrolled at the school.
Public Relations Officer Leon Cossou, himself a former apprentice, explained that although alumni gather to reconnect, their primary purpose is to give back.
“We aim to give back to the school for the well-being of the apprentices.”
The organisation, now celebrating its tenth anniversary, traces its roots to a major reunion held in Guyana in 2016. Since then, members have continued meeting annually in New York while maintaining close ties with fellow graduates in Guyana and Canada.

Their fundraising has produced tangible benefits for current students.
Each year, proceeds from the event are used to purchase sports uniforms and other necessities for apprentices entering the training programme, expenses that were once fully covered by Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) but which many parents are now required to bear.
“We’re doing this to alleviate expenses from the parents,” Cossou explained.
The association has also donated tools and other equipment over the years and recently held a fundraising activity in Guyana as part of the build-up to the institution’s upcoming 70th anniversary celebrations. Those funds are expected to finance another project at the school once administrators determine their greatest need.
For Cossou, however, supporting today’s apprentices is deeply personal.
He entered the Port Mourant Training Centre in 1984 after being sponsored by the Diamond Sugar Estate. During his four years there, he specialised in electrical and instrument repair mechanics and graduated as the recipient of the prestigious Watson Award, presented to the top apprentice in his batch.
After spending several years working in Guyana, he migrated to the United States in 1997, where he eventually joined the New York City Transit Authority. Today, he serves as a supervisor overseeing repairs to subway trains, work that, he says, would have been difficult to secure without the technical foundation laid at Port Mourant.
Reflecting on his apprenticeship, Cossou said the curriculum extended well beyond textbooks and classrooms.
“Our basic training at GuySuCo Training Centre gives you hands-on machining, bench work, auto mechanic and these kinds of skills,” he said.
Those practical competencies, combined with instruction in electrical and electronic systems, matched the requirements needed to enter New York City’s transit system.
“Once you have those requirements that transit needs, then you’re able to get a job,” he explained.
Although he later earned a university degree in Operations Management in New York, Cossou said it was the combination of that education and the technical skills acquired at Port Mourant that allowed him to advance into supervision.
“I’m glad that I have that background because what I chose to do once I came here has done me a great favour in life,” he said.
For Cossou, that experience is precisely why the alumni association remains committed to supporting each new intake of apprentices.
The institution that once invested in their futures, he believes, deserves the same commitment from those whose lives it helped transform.
After hearing Leon Cossou speak about giving back to the institution that helped shape his future, it becomes clear that his story is far from unique.
Scattered throughout the crowd were men whose lives had followed remarkably similar paths. They entered the Port Mourant Training Centre as teenagers from sugar estates across Guyana, learnt a trade, developed a discipline that extended beyond the workshop, and eventually built careers that carried them far beyond the boundaries of the industry that first brought them together.
Among them was Stephen Mangal, who entered the training centre in 1975 through the Skeldon Estate.
Choosing agricultural mechanics, he immersed himself in a four-year apprenticeship that combined classroom instruction with practical field experience before graduating in 1980.
He returned to Skeldon Estate as an agricultural mechanic, where he would spend almost three decades maintaining equipment vital to estate operations before migrating to the United States in 2009.
Looking back, Mangal says the greatest gift the institution gave him was not simply technical knowledge but the confidence and discipline to approach life and work professionally.
“I learned a lot from training school,” he reflected.
He said the institution also taught him valuable interpersonal skills that stayed with him throughout his working life.
“It taught me how to approach people and how to talk to people.”
Those lessons, he said, enabled him to provide for his family.
“It helped me a lot… it supported my family.”
His career may have been spent in grease-covered workshops and among heavy agricultural machinery, but Mangal speaks of those years with unmistakable pride.
“It was always a pleasure to do the work. I liked the field.”
Asked whether his life would have unfolded the same way without the Port Mourant Training Centre, his answer came without hesitation.
“No.”
He explained that, like many young men from sugar communities at the time, his options after secondary school were limited.
The apprenticeship programme, he explained, gave him a recognised trade, stable employment and, ultimately, the ability to build a better future for his family.
Meanwhile, for Christopher Vasconcellos, whose apprenticeship began three years later in 1978, the story followed a different path but arrived at much the same destination.
After qualifying as an auto electrician, he worked briefly in Guyana before migrating to the United States with his family.
Today, nearly four and a half decades later, he owns Chander Auto Repairs in Harlem, where he has spent almost 45 years building a reputation as an automotive technician and entrepreneur.
Although thousands of miles now separate him from Port Mourant, he says the foundation of his success was laid long before he reached New York.
“The training from there played a big part in my life.”
But when asked exactly what made the institution different, his answer moved beyond technical instruction.
“They train you about life, discipline, responsibility.”
Unlike many vocational schools that simply teach a trade, he believes the Port Mourant Training Centre prepared young people for adulthood itself.
That, he insists, explains why so many of its graduates succeeded wherever life took them.
When asked whether another institution could have produced the same result, Vasconcellos smiled before offering perhaps the most memorable reflection of the afternoon.
“Port Mourant Training Centre makes you a man… It teaches you life in a way no other school does.”
Those words echoed far beyond his own experience.
As conversations continued among the alumni, it became increasingly clear that while graduates had pursued different trades, different professions and different lives, they shared one conviction: that the institution they entered as teenagers had given them far more than a certificate.
It had given them a foundation upon which entire careers and, in many cases, entirely new lives were built.
Those sentiments were echoed repeatedly throughout the reunion.
Although the men gathered had entered the Port Mourant Training Centre in different years, studied different trades and eventually pursued different careers, their reflections pointed to a common conclusion. The institution had become much more than a technical school. It had become a place where young men and, in more recent years, young women, were introduced to a culture of discipline, responsibility and professional excellence that would shape the rest of their lives.
Perhaps that explains why, almost seven decades after the first apprentices walked through its gates, the Port Mourant Training Centre continues to occupy such a special place in the hearts of its graduates.
Established in 1957 by Booker Sugar Estates, the institution was created to train the skilled craftsmen needed to support Guyana’s expanding sugar industry. Following the nationalisation of the industry in 1976, it became part of GuySuCo, but its mission remained largely unchanged: to produce highly skilled technicians capable of keeping one of the country’s most important industries operating efficiently.
Generation after generation of apprentices passed through its classrooms and workshops, combining academic instruction with practical industrial training before returning to sugar estates across Guyana or pursuing careers elsewhere. Along the way, the institution developed a reputation for producing graduates whose skills, discipline and professionalism opened doors far beyond the communities from which they came.
Today, after 63 graduation ceremonies, the Port Mourant Training Centre has produced at least 3492 qualified apprentices, many of whom have gone on to distinguished careers in engineering, manufacturing, mining, utilities, transportation, construction, and business – both in Guyana and overseas.
Yet numbers alone tell only part of the story.
Its true legacy is measured by the lives it has transformed.
Former Region Six Chairman David Armogan captured that legacy during the institution’s 58th graduation ceremony in 2019 when he reflected on the achievements of former apprentices.
“It is not difficult to find someone who is an executive in an organisation outside of Guyana that passed through the Port Mourant Training Centre.”
He then offered what many graduates regard as one of the greatest tributes to the institution.
“That alone tells you the level of training that you can get here.”
Meanwhile, speaking with Stephen Mangal, Leon Cossou and Christopher Vasconcellos, it is difficult to argue otherwise.
Their careers followed different paths.
Mangal devoted almost three decades to the sugar industry before migrating to the United States.
Cossou carried the technical skills acquired at Port Mourant into the New York City Transit Authority, where he now serves as a supervisor.
Vasconcellos transformed his apprenticeship into a successful automotive repair business that has served customers in Harlem for almost 45 years.
Each story is different, yet each began in the workshops and classrooms of the same institution. They are living examples of the reputation Armogan described.
For decades, similar stories have unfolded quietly wherever former apprentices settled. Some remained in Guyana and became the skilled craftsmen who maintained factories, workshops and field equipment across the sugar industry. Others accepted positions with public utilities, engineering companies, manufacturers, mining operations, and construction firms. Many migrated, taking with them technical skills that enabled them to compete successfully in industries throughout the Caribbean, North America, Europe, and beyond.
It is perhaps that remarkable record that convinced President Dr Irfaan Ali that the legacy of the Port Mourant Training Centre should not merely be preserved but expanded.
In outlining the Government’s vision for technical education, the President announced:
“Our plan is to establish an expanded Guyana Technical Training College right here in Port Mourant, incorporating the old Port Mourant Training School but expanding it with the National Oil and Gas Institute…”
The statement recognised that while Guyana’s economy is changing rapidly, the qualities that made the Port Mourant Training Centre successful – technical competence, practical experience, and disciplined training – remain as valuable today as they were nearly 70 years ago.
That commitment became even clearer when President Ali commissioned the first phase of the new training complex in February 2024.
Describing the significance of the project, he said, “This is $2.6 billion invested in the future of our country.”
His vision extends well beyond the needs of the sugar industry. It is one in which Port Mourant evolves into a centre for preparing Guyanese to excel in oil and gas, manufacturing, construction, hospitality and other emerging sectors while preserving the tradition of technical excellence that made the institution one of the country’s most respected training schools.
For the former apprentices gathered in New York, that vision is not difficult to understand.
Long before Guyana became one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, the Port Mourant Training Centre had already demonstrated that when young people are given the right training, discipline and opportunity, there is virtually no limit to what they can achieve.