‘Employ the young’ is the perennial cry

Oct 09, 2016 Features / Columnists, My Column

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By Adam Harris

This past week the government announced that it was going to do something about the poor performance at Mathematics. One of the recipes for improvement is to rehire retired teachers in this field.
This announcement took me back. I keep hearing the criticisms of older people being employed ahead of the young people and I wondered at the absence of any criticism here. I for one firmly believe that young people should be allowed to take their rightful place in the society. I am one of those who believe that young people are the future of any country.
Of course, there are cases where the performance of the young leaves me terribly disappointed. Some young reporters seem out of sorts. They are not keen to approach prominent people; they are ill-prepared for press conferences and therefore cannot question the host as adequately as a reporter should.
Editors would tell you that the quality of writing leaves a lot to be desired. And this is not only true for Guyana. But in Guyana the local media experience a high turnover of staff. Many of those who enter the profession are not up to standard and others simply seek the glamour which fades at the first sign of serious work.
I can understand the absence of young people to replace the older ones when it comes to teaching mathematics. These young people themselves were not properly prepared so they are at a disadvantage. But they are also similarly disadvantaged when it comes to certain jobs. The education system has failed them.
During my interaction with local contractors many bemoan the quality of the recruitment pool. The say that the newly graduated engineers are very wet behind the ears; that they must be properly oriented by learning the job on the job. Some do learn but many find the process too tedious.
It is the same in many areas of national life. In medicine there are young doctors just out of medical school. For starters, all those who clamour for young people to be readily employed would balk at the idea of being treated by a very young doctor. I am willing to bet that anyone seeking medical attention would prefer to be treated by the older person.
Similarly, parents would feel comfortable knowing that an older person is going to impart knowledge to their children. Yet I keep hearing about young people being kept out of the job market by older people.
When I was very much younger I remembered the advertisements in the press. In almost every case the advertiser kept asking for people with experience. I recalled asking myself “if these people did not give me a chance how could I gain experience?”
As I became older I recognized that indeed young people needed a break; they needed to enter the world of work but there were some jobs that young people simply could not get because of their lack of experience.
In Guyana, though, the fact that many young people appear to be unemployed is because those who are qualified to gain employment reject the pay. I had cause to comment on this situation in the past. I argued that one should take what one gets before moving to the stage where one can actually dictate what one gets.
Those who clamour for youth employment seem to forget that they should also help these young people. Many of them are unemployable because not everyone is academically inclined. For this reason there were the technical institutions and later, institutions like the Guyana National Service.
Guyana introduced multilateral education to aid those who were more technically inclined. In the absence of the Guyana National Service and the multilateral institutions we now have a large population of young people who are unemployable unless they enter the system at the basic level.
As a young boy illiteracy was for the older person. Today a large batch of young people simply cannot read or write. In the absence of literacy there is the absence of reasoning. There is a diminution of tolerance, an absence of the ability to compromise and a general lack of understanding.
A recent publication suggested that youth unemployment stands at 40 per cent. The advocates proclaim, “Employ young people.” It is not that they are saying that one should employ suitably qualified young people. There is this blanket call because it sounds nice.
At Kaieteur News there is a policy to employ young people with the hope that they could be trained. I must say that the quality of these people shocked me despite the fact that they all had impressive certificates. The company sent three of the least capable packing within a month. It is also open to recruiting more young people. And the treatment would be the same.
There is another thing that the people who want to see youth employment fail to appreciate is the fact that they turn up for an interview as if they are going to a supermarket or for a lime with friends in the afternoon.
That is an immediate turnoff. It is a signal that the young person never attempted to come to grips with the reality of the workplace. Then I would always ask them about the last thing that they read.
Many do not even read the daily papers so they are ignorant of what is happening in their own country.
For starters, the Education Ministry is seeking the retired mathematics person and I am waiting to hear a protest about shutting out young people.
President David Granger has spoken about setting up a Public Service Training Centre to ensure that the public service gets the best quality of young people. I now want to see adults talking about those very young people about doing the things that would make them employable. In life, nothing comes easy and it becomes even more difficult when we don’t have the rudiments to get a start in life.

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