Medical, engineering programmes to be introduced in five regions

The government will introduce medical and engineering programmes in Regions Two, Three, Five, Six and Nine to ease pressure on the University of Guyana’s Turkeyen campus, President Irfaan Ali said on Tuesday.

Ali, speaking at his first press conference since being re-elected, said applications to the university have doubled following the government’s introduction of free education from nursery to tertiary levels, with medicine and engineering seeing high demand.

“To meet this demand and ease pressure on the Turkeyen campus, we are working on launching in the coming weeks, programmes across different regions,” the President said. “In medicine, we are ready to implement a rollout in Region Six creating 30 seats for the study of medicine at the New Amsterdam regional hospital.”

Academic staff have already been identified and the programme will be supported by the university’s Berbice campus, he added.

Ali noted that final assessments are being done to ensure administrative systems, lab facilities and IT connectivity are ready before the end of the year. Teaching space has been identified in Region Three, with similar preparations underway in Regions Two and Nine.

Thirty seats will also be created in Regions Three, Two and Six for engineering programmes, he said.