President Ali announces skills development programme for Belladrum

-addresses residents’ concerns

Residents of Belladrum, West Coast Berbice will soon benefit from a skills development programme that will see more young people getting the opportunity to train directly in areas such as heavy machine operations and mechanics.

This was disclosed today by President, Dr Mohamed Irfaan Ali during a visit to the community.

“These are not necessarily persons who are from an academic stream or persons who would have to get certain qualifications to get into the technical institutes or the university…These are persons who may not have the qualifications but who we want to train technically to participate in the different sectors of the economy so we will be coming back to these communities as soon as that programme is launched,” the president noted.

This visit follows one made last year.

“What I’m here to do is to continue the conversation, to listen to you on how we can further enhance the development of the community…to listen to you as to what other ideas you may have, and how we can move those ideas forward.

“I’m here to talk to the people. I’m here to listen to the people…to listen to your concerns and to work with you on solving your problems… to work with you on developing your communities… to work with you on uplifting the lives of the people in this community,” President Ali told the residents.

He reminded that at the last meeting, several goals were set to be achieved in the community, noting that concerns at that time revolved around drainage and irrigation, support to farmers, development of the community centre and community ground, creating opportunities at the village level for women and improvement of livelihoods.

“We have had development in all three areas of the community…to begin with, I want to say to the GOAL [Guyana Online Academy of Learning] scholars in this community, we had only 10 applications from Belladrum and all 10 of those persons who applied were granted GOAL scholarships from the Belladrum area.”

In addition, more than 10.5 miles of drainage and irrigation work was done in the communities, while farmers also benefitted from the shade house project.

Further, President Ali has assigned Public Service Minister Sonia Parag to the community to look into the interest of the residents there.   

“She will be coming to you, door by door working with every member of this community and I want you to take her in as a member of your community because… that is the only way we can take our country forward.”

The president also highlighted the developments taking place across the country and the support his government is giving to the citizens.

“Those who can’t see the transformation…don’t want to, look at the improvements that we are making in drainage and irrigation, road network, education, bringing back the school uniform grant, the transportation grant, increasing old age pension,” the president pointed out.

The head of state also addressed a number of concerns raised by the residents at the meeting.  

Minister of Agriculture, Zulfikar Mustapha and other officials also accompanied the president.