Labour Minister Joseph Hamilton visits Art Williams and Harry Wendt Aeronautical Engineering School of Guyana

Guyana: Minister of Labour Joseph Hamilton, accompanied by the Chief Executive Officer of the Board of Industrial Training, Richard Maughn, visited the Art Williams and Harry Wendt Aeronautical Engineering School on Friday, 25th November 2022, met with the Chairman of the School Board, Capt. Paul Ronald Reece, the Accountable and General Manager, Nalini Chanderban and Kit Nascimento, PR Consultant.

The meeting discussed the way forward to have the school registered with the Board of Industrial Training as an Apprentice Master training institution.

The Art Williams and Harry Wendt Aeronautical Engineering School accept students onto its Ab-Initio Training Programme to become licenced Aircraft Maintenance Engineers, and they also receive an Associate Degree in Aircraft Maintenance Engineering. The visit aimed to target students who may not meet these entrance requirements but can also be trained in skill sets that are common in engineering, with a view to expanding the scope of the school’s operations to cover more competency-based vocational areas.

This school has a robust support system and meets the criteria for its maintenance training due to its continued approval and certification under the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority, the National Accreditation Council, the Council for Technical Vocational Education and Training and its approval under the Caribbean Aviation Safety and Security Oversight Systems of CARICOM.

Training is done for Guyanese students as well as students from Barbados, St Vincent, Antigua, Suriname, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago.

A few national students were sponsored by the Guyana Defence Force Air Corps (since 1999), the Guyana Police Force, the Ministry of Public Service and regional students by Caribbean Airlines Ltd., LIAT and the Civil Aviation Safety Authority of Suriname.

The Minister met with staff and students and praised them for the enrolment of females (in large numbers) in the training programme. He encouraged everyone to chase their passion and encouraged them to persevere in their studies.

The Minister tasked the Board of Industrial Training to establish a partnership with the Art Williams and Harry Wendt Aeronautical Engineering School earliest in order to design and deliver an expanded curriculum of vocational training, targeting students in all regions of Guyana.