Eighty-three adults have graduated from the National Training Programme for Youth Empowerment, completing a course designed to equip working adults with technical and supervisory skills. The ceremony took place at the GuySuCo Training Centre (GTC) in Port Mourant, Region Six. GTC Manager Jainarine Sookpaul addressed the gathering, describing the cohort's achievements and outlining the centre's role in preparing graduates for the labour market.

The programme ran for six months, from January to late June 2026. It was structured specifically around the needs of working adults, with classes held four days a week in the evenings so that participants could continue their existing employment while training. Five trades were offered during this cycle: electrical installation, motor vehicle servicing and repairs, refrigeration, supervisory management, and welding and fabrication.

The intake figures point to a demanding selection and completion process. Of 120 people who applied, 104 began the course, and 83 went on to graduate. That attrition between enrolment and completion reflects the pressure of balancing full-time work with structured evening study over half a year.

Academic results were strong across the cohort. Graduates earned 51 distinctions and 27 credits between them, a distribution that Sookpaul highlighted as evidence of the programme's rigour. He also drew attention to the safety record maintained throughout the course. Trainees worked daily with heavy machinery, live electrical systems and fabrication tools, environments where the margin for error is often slim. No accidents were recorded during the six months. Sookpaul credited this outcome, along with the academic results, to the discipline instilled by the centre's 17-member teaching staff, who oversaw both classroom instruction and hands-on practical work.

The GTC operates under a partnership with the Board of Industrial Training (BIT), which provides the institutional framework for accreditation and curriculum standards. The presence of local business representatives at the graduation ceremony offered a visible sign of employer interest in the graduates, many of whom are expected to move directly into technical or supervisory positions within their industries.

Much of the address to graduates focused on personal development rather than technical achievement alone. Sookpaul spoke about self-reliance and the doubts that many trainees carried into the programme, particularly those on the supervisory management track, where participants often had to unlearn earlier assumptions about their own capabilities before taking on leadership responsibilities. He framed the six months as a period in which graduates moved from uncertainty about their prospects to a defined place within the skilled workforce.

This cohort brings the total number of people who have completed the programme since its founding in 2013 to 1,401. That figure spans more than a decade of intake cycles across the trades offered at the centre, and it positions the latest group within a longer institutional record rather than as an isolated success.

Sookpaul closed his remarks with acknowledgments directed at the Government of Guyana, the Board of Industrial Training and GuySuCo, the three bodies whose continued backing sustains the centre's operations. He described their support as central to the ongoing development of a trained national workforce, particularly in regions where access to formal vocational education remains limited outside programmes of this kind.

For the 83 graduates, the certificates awarded in Port Mourant mark the end of a demanding six months and, for many, the beginning of a shift into more senior or specialised roles. Whether in electrical work, vehicle repair, refrigeration, welding or supervisory posts, the skills certified this week are intended to translate directly into workplace responsibility, with the zero-accident record serving as an early indicator of how that responsibility was handled under training conditions.

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