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Time has come to focus on young people – PNCR
The time has come to focus on what is being done for the young people of Guyana as their horizons become limited by the lack of employment opportunities, People’s National Congress Reform Vice Chairman, Basil Williams said.
Williams told reporters on Friday that because of the lack of employment, youths are tempted to engage in many anti-social activities manifested in so many parts of society.
He once again called for revert to the Guyana National Service.
During a press conference hosted at the Congress Place, Sophia, Williams explained to the media that unemployed youths are most likely to engage in anti-social behaviour, such as crime or the consumption and sale of drugs. “If the President Youth Choice Initiative was intended to create employment for young people it has signally failed.”
A more carefully thought out approach, he said, based on a realistic assessment of the condition of the young people of Guyana, would be the preferred and recommended approach.
The young, in particular, Williams added, are being battered, shorn of their idealism and hope, as they remain unemployed for very long periods.
“Which Guyanese does not know that many graduates, from the tertiary and secondary education institutions, are likely to be without employment for as long as a decade?”
In fact, unemployment among young people may be as high as 45 percent, the Vice Chairman opined.
It is past the time that the Jagdeo Administration put in place special measures to ensure that unemployment among young people is substantially reduced, Williams added.
“There is need for such a reduction not only for economic reasons but more importantly for social ones.”
In spite of the objective reality, the Jagdeo Administration clings to the fantasy that workers are adequately paid and remain deaf to the plight of the old and the young, he noted.
For public servants to exist, the average salary should be GY$70,000 per month. “The propaganda statistics also obscure and mislead the public about the dire conditions of the poor and the elderly.”
Whenever the question of increased salaries and wages for Guyanese workers is raised, the reaction of the Jagdeo Administration is to the percentages of the increases it allegedly gave to them, Williams said.
Apart from the fact that these increases do not empower workers to cope with the cost of living, he added, this approach also obscures the real misery of the conditions of the workers.
“We only have to look beyond the misleading statistics, put out by the Government, to recognize that public servants cannot afford such basic things as transportation, electricity, and the purchase of adequate amounts of food for their families.”
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