The Guyana gov­ern­ment says it is mov­ing to amend the Lo­cal Con­tent Act next year to en­sure that all loop­holes are reg­u­lat­ed ef­fec­tive­ly warn­ing that com­pa­nies who are non-com­pli­ant with the leg­is­la­tion will have a lot to wor­ry about in the fu­ture.

Guyana’s lo­cal con­tent law man­dates 75 per cent of man­age­ment po­si­tions in com­pa­nies, be held by Guyanese, with on­ly 25 per cent al­lowed for for­eign work­ers. How­ev­er, com­pa­nies are al­leged­ly ro­tat­ing for­eign work­ers every six months and sub­vert­ing the re­quire­ment for Guyanese man­agers.

“I spoke with the com­mis­sion­er and we are now draft­ing leg­is­la­tion that will cov­er that loop­hole,” Vice Pres­i­dent Bhar­rat Jagdeo said,

He said in ad­di­tion, the gov­ern­ment is re­view­ing the el­i­gi­bil­i­ty per­cent­ages for a num­ber of sec­tors out­lined in the leg­is­la­tion, in­clud­ing rentals re­quir­ing 100 per cent lo­cal pro­cure­ment.

Jagdeo hint­ed at the pos­si­bil­i­ty of adding new sec­tors to the lo­cal con­tent sched­ule.

“It’s not just that sort of re­form that will come but al­so, we are look­ing to close the loop­holes here…Some com­pa­nies are do­ing this and they would be writ­ten to short­ly to en­sure greater com­pli­ance,” he added.

Jagdeo said that the sit­u­a­tion is be­ing mon­i­tored care­ful­ly as the well-be­ing of Guyanese is a pri­or­i­ty and that it has pro­vid­ed sup­port to these ‘big’ com­pa­nies, and they will not be al­lowed to “shaft” Guyanese.

“Be­cause our ul­ti­mate aim is to get our peo­ple, not just as work­ers in these places, but as man­agers too. So, they have to train and im­prove (their) skills. And so, on­ly when they can re­al­ly demon­strate that we don’t have this skill, then we can tol­er­ate that. But some of them are do­ing this to by­pass Guyanese man­age­ment,” Jagdeo said.

The gov­ern­ment ac­knowl­edged that al­though the leg­is­la­tion re­quires amend­ments, the cur­rent act has fa­cil­i­tat­ed hun­dreds of small and medi­um busi­ness­es, who are ben­e­fit­ting from the oil and gas in­dus­try.

It said thou­sands of Guyanese or busi­ness­es are now par­tic­i­pat­ing in the coun­try’s new­ly found in­dus­try.

GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana, Nov 4, CMC –

CMC/gt/ir/2024