Is the NOC wrongly placed within this Ministry?

May 18, 2014 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Few of us would not have experienced deep sadness on reading a mother in anguish say “I honestly thought that by sending my daughter to NOC(New Opportunity Corps) ….. that I was doing the right thing. I thought that they had persons that were trained professionally to help her but it’s like I sent her to hell ….. I feel guilty.”  The recent allegations of sexual molestation of children at this correctional institution is nothing new and one wonders what has to happen to our children before Guyanese will take action and force an obviously uncaring government to treat our children with some level of respect and decency they deserve. How do we demand the most severe punishment for sexual predators on the streets while being shamefully silent when our children are allegedly wronged while in the care of the state? The most embarrassing thing about being Guyanese is not that we are the poorest citizens of the English speaking Caribbean, but that we are spineless and would not even stand up in our children’s interest.
But whether the accusations of sexual molestation at NOC are true in this instance, importantly it has brought this institution under needed scrutiny again. Perhaps about two years ago I wrote a letter to the editor in which I spoke of the lack of qualified staff at NOC. NOC is the principal correctional facility in the country for adolescents, yet in recent years none of the persons on site with responsibility for the institution’s day to day operations has been the holder of more than a diploma in social work.
Indeed, some have had persons holding this extremely important position who have had no university training at all. What is worse while I was in Guyana two years ago, the gentleman with responsibility for NOC, whose office is located at the ministry had no university training. Indeed, in keeping with the PPP government’s usual nefarious behavior, the unskilled ‘comrade’ was never- the- less given the job even though hundreds of Guyanese with the diploma in social work remain unemployed. So, while there is a lack of social work skills at NOC, the staff there could not turn to their ‘boss’ at head office for help since he was clueless in the area of adolescent behavior.
That persons with little or no training in adolescent development and or management of correctional facilities for the young would be manning such an important institution is frightening and a statement on how serious the government takes this facility.  As I indicated in a previous letter on the NOC, the major problem of the NOC is its inability to attract sufficiently qualified staff.  Of all the social work agencies in the country, NOC must be the one that tests the worker’s professional skills the most, yet it is NOC that has the least staff qualified in the humanities. The reason for this is that the better qualified persons are not willing to leave the city and the company of their families and friends to work in Essequibo for the ridiculous wages paid to qualified persons in Guyana. This is the major problem – how to attract competent persons to leave their families while offering them ridiculously low salaries?  I note that instead of offering decent salaries as a way of attracting our best skilled persons we are relying on foreigners to do the work. Let me give this warning, I have great respect for the efforts of Peace Corps volunteers, in many instances I am aware of them being prepared  to undergo hardships that locals would rarely accept. However I have never met a Peace Corps volunteer who is so skilled in cross cultural counseling that I would place them to work at a local correctional institution for youth. It is brainless things like this that make one cynical when we hear the Minister with responsibility for NOC tells us he is “saddened” by what he hears might be going on at NOC.
Listening to the Minister with responsibility for the New Opportunity Corps is even more pathetic. Responding to the children’s accusation of not having enough food, he responds: “if you check the budget, we are given adequate money for this cause.”
Now what sort of response is that?  Isn’t he aware that the inmates of the Georgetown prison regularly complain of the same thing?  Does he have any doubt that Minister Rohee’s response would be the same as his?  The inmates have accused the lowly paid prison officers of taking food stuff meant for them off the compound, if this is happening at the prison is it not likely also happening at NOC?  This is what happens particularly at total institutions and in Guyana where workers are paid starvation salaries it will happen more as workers are forced to seek ways for augment their meager salaries.Then the minister says he wants parents to visit their children weekly. Well, since the children of the rich never take up residence at NOC, it is mostly the children of the urban poor who are there, so where are their parents to find the resources to make this long and expensive trip regularly?  If indeed the minister sees regular visits from relatives as helpful, what is his government and more directly his ministry doing to make it easy on the pockets of parents and guardians to do so?
There is such a lack of seriousness and understanding by the authorities of what is required when managing a facility like NOC that it is embarrassing, and you secretly hope our brothers in the Caribbean  are not taking notice. What programs are there for keeping these young people active after 430pm each day?  Are there group cultural presentation competitions and are there impromptu speech and debating competitions in the evenings? Are they learning Guyanese history by way of dance, music and dramatic presentations? Is there even a cultural department at NOC? Is there an education unit that ensures some level of academic competence, if so what are the competencies that students must attain by the time they complete their stint?
Do these two units (culture and education) work together to deliver lessons in a most interesting and interactive manner?  Is there a sports department – not one person who is expected to take care of all the various sporting interests of the children? One can curse the PNC as much as one wants, but in the Guyana National Service they certainly demonstrated a competence in employing novel ways of promoting learning while catering for the various recreational interest of thousands of young people.
Perhaps the NOC is wrongly placed within the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport; apparently NOC is located in the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport simply because it caters for youth. Perhaps responsibility for the NOC should be with the Ministry of Social Services, where there is some focus on counseling and rehabilitation.
Claudius Prince

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