The society is losing its menfolk, and fast

Apr 27, 2014 Features / Columnists, My Column

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One of the cries I hear almost every day is that there are no jobs for young people. At the same time I am often besieged by applications for employment. And indeed it is true that many young school leavers simply cannot find jobs.
Most of the businesses are in the private sector and these people are more interested in the bottom line, so they hire the barest minimum of people.  With the construction boom, people also gain employment. In fact, some contractors complain that they cannot find enough labourers. They also say that they have a hard time finding semi-skilled labour.
So there are jobs, but there are simply not enough people to accept them, because the school system does not actually prepare people for skilled labour. I chatted with some educationists and they all say that the education system is heavily academic. The result is that those children who are not academically inclined simply drop out.
Not so long ago, in a discussion with Ms Gail Teixeira, I learnt that when there was a recruiting programme for the Guyana National Service, the applications were so many. The service could only take about twenty per cent of the applicants.
This would suggest that there are people who want their children to be gainfully employed. Sadly, this government so scaled down National Service that young people who would have been gainfully occupied are now left to roam the streets.
On Thursday I was at the opening of the annual Police Officers’ Conference. Three things struck me. One of them was that there is a shortage of policemen. Young people are slow to seek employment with the police and there is a reason for this. There was a time when people simply distrusted the police because of the excesses they visited on some communities.
Police Commissioner Seelall Persaud was open when he discussed his police force. He said that he, in his years as a policeman, has seen excesses against the very people that the police have taken an oath to protect and serve.
The force is about thirty-three per cent short, so there are about one thousand jobs begging to be taken in the Guyana Police Force alone. But the young people are not going there. Perhaps there are parents who feel that their children would come under fire from the criminal elements. But the reality is that once there is a strong police force, the fewer would be the number of criminals. However, I cannot sell that idea to many parents.
As if the alternative between joining the police force is to turn to a life of crime, I keep seeing a preponderance of young people being apprehended. Some of them have committed armed robberies and some of them are simply snatch-and-grab bandits.
This past weekend I received a call from an area named Plum Park about some young people who have formed themselves into gangs. It was reported that these young people accost their counterparts who are leaving for work in the early morning and are forcing them to run back home. This could only cause the ranks of the unemployed to swell.
The police have been trying to combat this new wave of crime, but they do not know the area, and there are people who simply protect the young criminals, either because they are flesh and blood or because these people benefit from the proceeds.
I am saddened by the presence of men at the street corners at all hours of the day. These are people who would need money and money is not had by liming. The offshoot is logical.
A friend recently said to me that Guyana is a give and take society. The people who work their butts off to make ends meet are now being forced to give to people who want without having to taste their own sweat.  The latter are the takers.
As fate would have it, this situation is not unique to Guyana. If it is as global as some would want to believe, then there must be a global solution. In Guyana there is a lot of talk about revamping the education system. But revamp it to what?
We have constructed technical institutes but the process of technical education must begin from early. There was a time when we had multilateral schools. Each had a technical section and produced some of the best technicians, because the children simply followed the natural progression. Queen’s College had a carpentry section.
These schools were converted to academic clinics and the technically-inclined student was simply pushed to cope in an area where he was least likely to succeed. The situation is worrying.
It is good to see that women are grabbing those job areas that the men seem to be shying away from. I noticed that a bunch of women have taken firm grip of the information technology section of Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company. There was a time when they would not have even been considered.
In Guyana Power and Light Inc., I recalled meeting a woman who was integral to the setting up of the power station at Vreed-en-Hoop. She was an engineer and I was told that there are others similarly qualified.
We are now left to wonder at the reduction in the number of weddings, the increase in the number of single-parent mothers, and the growing number of boys who are good for nothing.

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