Sod turned for $100M Berbice OSH training centre

Technical and vocational education in Guyana is being transformed even further with the soon-to-be-established Occupational Safety and Health Centre of Excellence (OSHCE). The ceremonial sod turning for the $100 million project took place on Friday.

The Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) training facility will be built in the compound of the New Amsterdam Technical Institute and is a collaborative effort between the Greater Guyana Initiative, the Ministry of Education, the Council for Technical and Vocational Education and Training and LearnCorp International.
The OSHCE programme started in Guyana in 2019 and has been contributing to technical and vocational education in Guyana. These include infrastructure and equipment upgrades, instructor training and mentorship, and the introduction of the Basic Industrial Safety Training (BIST) across all TVET (Technical and Vocational Education and Training) institutions.
The programme seeks to have students adopt a safety mindset and to incorporate it in all aspects of their education and training so they will be fully prepared and cognisant of safe working practices when they begin to ply their trades and enter the world of work.
President of ExxonMobil Guyana Alistair Routledge, speaking at Friday’s ceremony, said the establishment of OSHCE at the New Amsterdam Technical Institute represents a bold step forward in advancing safety leadership within the TVET system.

“I believe we can all agree, transforming the safety culture of an entire nation is no small feat. But I am convinced that we have the right people, the right programmes, and the right partnerships to achieve that vision. And importantly, we had already taken the first bold steps.”
He said the launch of OSHCE represents a bold vision for what safety education in Guyana can and should be.
“This facility will serve as the national host for the reintroduction of the CVQ Occupational Safety and Health Level 3 Diploma Programme, creating a pipeline of highly skilled, safety-conscious professionals to support Guyana’s rapidly expanding industrial sector.”
According to Routledge, it will also be the base from which the company will continue to invest in the professional development and safety training.
“But our commitment does not stop there. With the continued support of our growing team, we will roll out basic industrial safety training to every incoming TVET student at the start of each academic year, reaching more than 1,000 young Guyanese each semester,” Routledge announced.
Meanwhile, Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh said this is the era for us to do things differently, referring to ‘today’ as the era for re-engineering and reinventing.
“The current era in Guyana is not an era to be met with business as usual. If we want to do business with global giants like ExxonMobil and the Hess Corporation and SINAP and SBM… If we want to do business with global giants like these companies – and indeed medium-sized companies who are not necessarily a global giant but who operate internationally in international markets, who perhaps are raising capital in international markets and who answer to shareholders in international markets – if we want to do business with the rest of the world outside of our little bubble or cocoon, we have to be sensitive to the standards that are obtained in the rest of the world,” he asserted.
“An instant quantum leap,” Minister Singh said, “is needed in how we do business if, as Guyanese, we really want to do business in this new era.”
“And this applies to literally everything that we do, but it certainly does also apply no less to our approach and perspective and the way we do business in relation to occupational safety and health.”
He said gone are the days when we would walk onto a work site without our safety vest, without our safety helmet or without our safety boots.
The OSHCE building will be 2592 sq. feet in size and is expected to be opened in January 2026.