Govt launches part-time jobs initiative in Linden

Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo on Saturday officially launched the government’s part-time jobs initiative in Region 10.

Speaking to the beneficiaries at the Watooka Guest House, Linden, Jagdeo said this is the fulfilment of a promise made back in March when he made the announcement during an outreach there.

Jagdeo had stated that 800 jobs would be made available, however, the region will benefit from 1,000 of these jobs. This forms part of the administration’s plan to subsidise household income in light of the rising cost of living. Jagdeo explained that pre-COVID, Guyana lost some 35,000 jobs due to poor government policies under the APNU+AFC. Reference was made to the heavy taxation and the subsequent shut down of the country when the pandemic hit. Jagdeo further explained that this resulted in more jobs being lost, imposing significant hardships on Guyanese. In light of this, the PPP/C Government has revised its manifesto promise of providing 50,000 jobs, looking at other ways of creating employment. “So it’s going to be about 8,000 to 10,000 of our people hired through this initiative. They will get $40,000 a month for 10 days of work.

“It’s not free money, you have to work, but you don’t have to go into fields etc. Because we need a lot of people to assist in the hospitals. We need some persons in the libraries in our schools. We can place people in different agencies so they are doing productive work,” he told the large gathering.

Jagdeo called on the beneficiaries to use the programme as a stepping stone and to also take advantage of the Guyana Online Academy of Learning (GOAL) scholarships, to improve themselves. Persons registered for the jobs and signed their one-year contracts to begin working in the new week.