Volunteer to gain experience – Energy Director tells UG students

With concerns raised about youths being denied job opportunities on the basis that they lack requisite experience in the fields, Energy Director, Dr Mark Bynoe has urged them to take up volunteerism.

Energy Department Director, Dr Mark Bynoe

He shared this position during the orientation exercise for students of the University of Guyana’s Faculty of Earth and Environmental Sciences on Thursday. There, the batch of students was given a guide on how to be professionally successful in their career paths.
“The big question becomes how are we going to get the experience if no one employs us. I say the quickest way to get that experience is to volunteer your services. Volunteerism is not such a foreign term and that’s the problem we have had…Many other volunteer institutions allow us to gain experience alongside the jobs we want to perform,” Bynoe shared.
Along with that, the Energy Director insisted that the competency of university graduates has been questioned in the past. For this, they are seeking to equip the oil and as sector with skilled personnel who can apply their training in practical settings.
“We’ve heard consistently about issues surrounding university graduates and persons not being able to perform because of difficulty in terms of competency…If as Guyanese we will be populating this new and emerging sector, it is important that we are grounded and have a common understanding in terms of what it means.”
He gave assurances of the vast employment opportunities which are essential in the oil industry. However, it entails investments in their educational field to qualify themselves. The oil sector has many components and will require human resources of different skills.
Dr Bynoe said to the new students, “You will benefit once you make the sacrifice…Each operator still needs to have a marine biologist. They still need to ensure that for every well that they drill, they conduct an Environmental and Social Impact Assessment. They must also construct an Environmental and Social Management Plan and those have to be monitored to ensure that they’re adherent to what is stipulated therein. Do not just follow the rhetoric but think about where your future lies”.
With these guidelines, Bynoe asked the University students to ask questions on how oil revenues will benefit their lives since Guyana will shift into production mode next year.
“Oil is no more a figment of our imagination, but is drawing closer to reality…Much discussion have gone on around oil and gas and Guyana being able to embark on a new frontier but it is also important for us to stop and ask ourselves how are we going to benefit from these new resources that will be coming in,” he said.