Infotep opens Barahona's training offer to Pedernales students

The Guarocuya Technical Training School in Barahona opened its doors to a group of students from Pedernales who want to know what lies behind the word "tourism" when it turns into a job. The visit was coordinated by Pedernales governor Edirda de Óleo, and it showcased Infotep's offer: workshops and diplomas in English, computing, sales, customer service, housekeeping, hotel front desk, bar and restaurant, gastronomy, accounting, cruise ports and event setup.

Elvis Céspedes, deputy director of Infotep's Southern Region, presented the training menu. The visit included a tour of the facilities, according to Arecoa, and let sixth-form students and already-graduated high schoolers see up close how a front-desk agent or a bar manager is trained. Faustina Romero, director of the Professor Pastor Roberto Méndez Arts Center in Pedernales, summed it up with a line that works as a diagnosis: "we will have a whole area full of hotels."

That is the point. Pedernales does not only need beds and excursions to Bahía de las Águilas. It needs trained people to serve them. Infotep's offer in Barahona covers exactly the profiles an emerging destination consumes first: customer service, housekeeping, front desk, gastronomy and cruise ports. The cruise detail is not minor, because the province has a port and specific training in cruise operations is a competitive edge over other southern destinations that do not offer it.

The cost of distance is the challenge. Barahona is a long trip from Pedernales, and the governor knows it, which is why she sponsored the transfer: bringing the offer closer is the only way young people from Enriquillo see it as a real option. The reading is clear: technical training becomes the first link in the tourism value chain, and provincial authorities are treating it as development policy, not an extracurricular activity.

Two things to watch. First, whether Infotep opens an extension or satellite offer in Pedernales, so students do not depend on the trip. Second, whether the hotels that set up in the area, and those already operating in Barahona, absorb these graduates with formal contracts. That is where training translates into family income and foreign currency for the state.