Faced with high un­em­ploy­ment in their area, res­i­dents of Ma­yaro and Guayagua­yare staged a plac­ard protest on Thurs­day call­ing on en­er­gy com­pa­nies to hire more res­i­dents.

The protest oc­curred af­ter 31 res­i­dents in­ter­viewed by El Do­ra­do Off­shore (EDO), re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that they will not be hired, de­spite hav­ing tech­ni­cal skills and ex­pe­ri­ence in the off­shore en­er­gy in­dus­try.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Pres­i­dent of the La Sa­vanne En­vi­ron­men­tal and De­vel­op­men­tal As­so­ci­a­tion (LE­DA) Elias Hyn­d­man said the EDO in­ter­view process was a sham. He said LE­DA had been set up in the coastal com­mu­ni­ty to pro­vide em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties to res­i­dents and as a unit will band to­geth­er to se­cure the in­ter­ests of res­i­dents.

“I be­lieve that to­day we have to show sol­i­dar­i­ty with our com­mu­ni­ty and our mem­bers to say to El Do­ra­do, enough is enough! We are not tak­ing that. We want El­do­ra­do to know we are not tak­ing that. We want Guyana, Suri­nam, and Mex­i­co to know we not tak­ing that. This is El Do­ra­do’s home­land and if they can do this to us that what it will leave for them to do else­where?” he asked.

Ac­cus­ing the com­pa­ny of ge­o­graph­i­cal dis­crim­i­na­tion, Hyn­d­man called on the com­pa­ny to give the res­i­dents their just dues.

“This is where we live. This is our en­ti­tle­ment. We are de­mand­ing jobs for our peo­ple to­day. Now! ” he shout­ed as the pro­tes­tors cheered.

Mean­while, LE­DA mem­ber Bri­an Fran­cis said it was high­ly ir­reg­u­lar for 31 mem­bers to at­tend an in­ter­view and for all 31 res­i­dents to be blanked. “This is high­ly in­con­sis­tent and we do not be­lieve it was a trans­par­ent process. We are here to ask that the protest be re­done in the true sense of fair­ness, keep­ing in mind that the drilling com­pa­ny had ap­plied for a Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance and a sig­nif­i­cant part of that agree­ment was that Guayagua­yare and the East Coast are di­rect­ly im­pact­ed,” Fran­cis said.

He added: “We should be em­ployed and we are not ask­ing for hand­outs, we are ask­ing for em­ploy­ment. We be­lieve that out of these 31 in­di­vid­u­als, they must have some of those who are am­ply qual­i­fied, skilled with the req­ui­site knowl­edge in ring­work and drilling op­er­a­tions.”

Fran­cis said this re­jec­tion was “un­prece­dent­ed” and was meant to cause di­vi­sion in the com­mu­ni­ty.

“We will re­sist any at­tempt by any com­pa­ny or or­ga­ni­za­tion as it re­lates to po­ten­tial em­ploy­ment to try to be di­vi­sive or try to put the or­ga­ni­za­tions against each oth­er. We be­lieve in a unit­ed strong Guayagua­yare and we will re­sist frag­men­ta­tion of our com­mu­ni­ty,” he added.

Au­gus­tine Mc Kain, the Vice Pres­i­dent of LE­DA pro­duced an email which stat­ed that in­ter­views done on 14 and 15 March 2023 had been suc­cess­ful.

“Yet they still did not em­ploy any­one from my com­mu­ni­ty,” he point­ed out.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to El Do­ra­do Off­shore to en­quire why the res­i­dents were not hired and whether the in­ter­views will be re­done. An of­fi­cial from the com­pa­ny said a me­dia state­ment will be is­sued short­ly.