MoU between BIT, GAICO & US firms: Work ongoing to provide training opportunities in oil & gas for BIT grads – Labour Minister

In the wake of the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Board of Industrial Training (BIT) and local and international companies, Labour Minister Joseph Hamilton has assured that work continues on ensuring training opportunities in the oil and gas sector for the graduates.
Hamilton gave this assurance while attending Saturday’s commissioning of the Malavi dredge by GAICO Construction Incorporated, one of the companies that signed the MoU at the International Energy Conference and Expo in February of this year.

“One of the important things we have been doing, is discussing how we transition young people, to be trained in new career paths. And that is a conversation myself and Komal, we have regularly,” Hamilton said.
“And you would note that during the oil and gas conference, the Board of Industrial Training and GAICO, with two of its overseas partners, we signed an MoU so that we can help young people to develop their skills, coming out of the training we do at the Board of Industrial Training.”
Besides GAICO Construction Inc and the Board of Industrial Training (BIT), the other signatories at the expo were US companies, Myer and Hargrove. According to Hamilton, operationalising the MoU continues as a work in progress.
“And that MoU is in place and we will continue to work on it to ensure that the people we train at the level of the Board of Industrial Training, they can experience training opportunities in the oil and gas sector, to make their contribution,” Hamilton explained.
The MoU, which was signed by representatives of the four entities at GAICO’s booth at the Expo, which was hosted at the Guyana Marriott Hotel in Georgetown, secures the commitment of the foreign companies to form an International Apprentice Programme.
This programme will see skilled Guyanese being trained and certified at the highest levels in the United States in order to prepare them to fully capitalise on the opportunities in the local oil and gas sector.
Vice President – Business Development at Myer Companies, Bradley Myer had explained that this partnership alliance is geared towards bringing Guyana’s welding and fabrication skillset up to international standards.
“We found that there is great local content here in Guyana and we can play our part in helping to bring out that local talent and truly help local content come along to compete worldwide,” he told reporters.
Myer had also noted that the signing sets the framework for these training activities, and in the next 60 days the partners will be working together in order to iron out the details of the programme.
“For us and our part, it means bringing Guyanese talent to Alabama and training them at our facility for a time period of roughly four months, but even those details need to be completely ironed out, and then come back here to the shores of Guyana fully certified amongst the best, really, in the world as far as American Building Society Certifications [go],” he explained.
This was the second MoU that GAICO Construction signed during the four-day International Energy Conference and Expo. The local construction company had previously inked another agreement with US-based end-to-end commissioning services company, Rev1 Energy, to boost GAICO’s capacity in bidding for major projects in the oil and gas industry and other sectors.
Additionally, the MoU with Myer and Hargrove was the second one signed by GAICO. Last August on sidelines of the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston, Texas, GAICO entered into a partnership the two US companies to work together towards the development of projects in Guyana while also enabling the transfer of skills and technology for the development of the Guyanese workforce in the growing oil and gas sector. (G3)