Guyana should be a nation of, and for, young people. However, the new century started ominously when the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) administration peremptorily demolished the Guyana National Service on 16th May 2000 after training more than 20,000 young persons over 26 years. That callous act forewarned of a policy of marginalisation that would jeopardise the future prospects of thousands over the succeeding twenty-five years.
It is well-known that unemployment is the primary problem affecting young people, many of whom leave secondary school and university but are unable to find jobs. Some young people – those not engaged in education, employment or training who are characterized as ‘NEET’ – run the risk of becoming involved in anti-social behavior, inter-personal violence, drug addiction and robbery. Young people constitute 67 per cent of the prison population today. Others are confined in the Juvenile Detention Centre and in the New Opportunity Corps.
Former President David Granger, speaking on the programme – The Public Interest – recalled that the youth unemployment crisis worsened during the PPP’s ruinous twenty-three-year 1992-2015 administration. The PPP ignored the Report of the CARICOM Commission on Youth Development – ‘Eye on the Future: Invest in Youth Now for the Community Tomorrow’ – which warned that the primary education dropout rate was “at a staggering height” and that unemployment among young people in the Caribbean Community was higher than many other developed and developing countries.
The PPP administration, ignoring that warning, embarked on a plethora of palliative projects – such as the effete ‘Duke of Edinburgh Award’ which it rebranded the President’s Youth Award: Republic of Guyana Programme; President’s Youth Choice Initiative; Youth-at-Risk Programme and Youth Entrepreneurship and Apprenticeship Programme – all of which failed to address the central crisis of unemployment.
The PPP, returning to office in 2020, quickly demolished the Guyana Youth Corps and dissolved the Bertram Collins College for the Public Service, both of which were permanent institutions established to promote youth education and employment. Recently, the administration cynically conjured the chimerical National Pathway Workers Programme which pays fifteen thousand young recruits G$40, 000 monthly for ten days’ temporary work without the prospect of long-term employment, education or training beyond workaday menial chores.
Mr. Granger reminded that the Public Education System is producing an increasing number of illiterate and innumerate youths, reflected in the high failure rates at the National Grade Six Assessment examinations and at the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate. The low performance rates are not unrelated to the high delinquency and dropout rates of about 6,000 students at primary, secondary, technical and vocational institutions annually that increase the number of NEETs.
The former president called attention to the Constitution of the Cooperative Republic which declares that: “…the future of Guyana belongs to its young people, who aspire to live in a safe society which respects their dignity, protects their rights, recognises their potential, listens to their voices, provides opportunities, ensures a healthy environment and encourages people of all races to live in harmony and peace…”
The PPP administration, in office for nearly 28 years of the past 32 years since 1992, continues to underrate the botheration caused by youth under-education, unemployment and under-training. The rate of unemployment, which is estimated at 26 per cent of the labour force or about 69,213 persons, is a ticking time bomb – a massive waste of human resources. Thousands of young people – NEETs – face a grim future under the PPP administration which makes light of one of the most weighty issues of the century. Young people deserve an opportunity to ever attain a ‘good life’.󠄀
