Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
May 14, 2013 Letters
DEAR EDITOR,
With the ever increasing number of young people who are leaving learning institutions all across Guyana, what is assured and is of absolute certainty is the unavailability of work for them to do.
Government has failed to show and convince us that employment and job creation for young people of this country is of great importance to them. Many people in Guyana especially young people are without jobs.
It is incumbent for policy makers to find a coordinated response to reversing this dreaded conundrum that is plaguing our youths. I urge government and opposition to merge their ideas to attract foreign investments for the creation of job opportunities for young people. I advocate for government to establish coordinated retraining activities to help young people bridge the skills gap that is needed and those that are caused by extended bouts of joblessness.
Government and policy-makers, if they are serious about unemployment that is affecting this beautiful land, need to rethink their strategies and engage in three primary areas that are crucial to employment generation.
According to the International Labour Organization director general Guy Ryder, “countries like Guyana and others in various parts of world that are seriously being affected by unemployment of young people need to (1) have injections of public investment into job creating initiatives while private funding remains shy. (2) By addressing rising labour market mismatch problems through retaining and re-skilling programs and finally by focusing actions on youth joblessness.
We need to allow for the benefits of our youths, and Guyana as a whole, for good governance and good sense prevail over the din of political rhetoric to unearth workable and practical solutions to help remedy this dire situation our youths, through no fault of their own, are faced with.
I am convinced, although I have no statistical evidence to back it up, that more than half of the students from high school, technical institutes and the University of Guyana are unemployed and unable to find a job
I was hopeful that with the new makeup of the parliament, and the consciousness of government, the shaded views of the true realities the youths of this country are being faced with would have been known and addressed, even if, at a sloth’s pace.
We were even more confident that the opposition, being the custodian of the majority in the tenth parliament, would have been more relentless and forceful in their pursuit to expose and speak out against this high level of corruption and visible ethic of greed in government that is affecting our collective lives as Guyanese.
I believe we need a rebirth of leadership and representation that possesses the fortitude to fully vindicate our values, particularly our rights and opportunities for the poor, and others who are most at risk.
Valued efforts must be deployed by these leaders to end racial discrimination that is evident and does exist in our land despite the efforts by government and some in the media, to deny its existence. To say it doesn’t exist, is to lie to our children and ourselves.
The libel suit against Mr. Kissoon provided this nation and all those who were stubborn to accept, too much information some would say, about this distasteful reality in our country.
This is nothing but a betrayal of the Guyanese trust, its confidence and its motto.
It is my belief that our communal values, our social solidarity and sense of mutual responsibility should express themselves not just in churches, mosque, and temples, not just in within our neighbourhoods, towns or regions where we live. It should not be expressed only in our place of work or within a particular racial grouping or within our families but also through our government.
I wish if there wasn’t an empathy deficit in our policy makers, because it is difficult to imagine that those in power would be willing to offer their mothers and fathers who would have worked and fought to preserve our independence a paltry pension, knowing it is insufficient to cushion this high cost of living. It is difficult to believe that these policy makers would not care that their children who are skilled and qualified are without work.
Enlightenment thinkers like Hobbes and Locke suggested that free men would have formed governments as a bargain to ensure that one man’s freedom did not become another man’s tyranny; that they would sacrifice individual licence to better preserve their liberty.
We as young Guyanese need those liberties and freedom to work in our own land and contribute to our country’s social and economic development.
Jermaine Figueira
Please share this to every Guyanese including your house cats.
Apr 19, 2024
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