Ideas for embracing the elderly in national development

Nov 02, 2016 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Editor’s note; this concludes Mr. Prince’ correspondence carried in our Saturday edition. We carried it in our edition yesterday but unfortunately, it was truncated
Interestingly in the developed world the private sector is comfortable employing elderly workers. A study done in the USA on this issue of older employees found that companies that employed older workers experienced the following advantages; “lower turnover, greater consciousness of safety, longer work experience, more maturity, and more loyalty to the enterprise.” McDonald’s, for example, capitalizes on these advantages and actively recruits older workers. A statement from the enterprise reads like this “the firm decided to permit older workers to proceed at their own pace, provide them with experts they can consult with, and then get out of their way and let them work. McDonald is very satisfied with the older workers’ productivity, attendance, and attitude.”
If I am correct and young people are not temperamentally suited for office work in the public service, the question then becomes ‘why are we still bent on having them there?’ The answer is twofold: (a) the private sector is not as active as desired and creates too few jobs, (b) our school system is not organized for preparing our young people for creating their own employment. Thus the government faced, with a high level of youth unemployment, has chosen to send workers into retirement at an early age.
In doing so it creates vacant slots for young people leaving school and needing jobs to fill. So, historically governments in Guyana practice age discrimination and thus mask the true unemployment figures. In the end, we are confronted with this ridiculous situation in which those who are suited for the job are at home, those who hate the job are doing it. Ultimately both groups are dissatisfied and national development is held hostage. What is even sadder is that Guyana knows better.
Years ago the Burnham government was prepared to think and act outside of the box and in doing so gave rise to excitement and enthusiasm among youth Guyanese. During that period the Guyana National Service, employing the raw energy of youth and the know- how of retirees from the civil service, army and police force gave CARICOM its most inspiring and boldest attempt at national development. Young people were excited. Those who participated were caught up in challenging ventures such as bursting open the hinter land, canning fruits, eating what they produced, growing and exporting non-traditional products like black-eye peas and cotton.
That period saw the release of what our brothers and sisters in CARICOM dubbed the only tribute to work LP (long playing record) produced in the Caribbean. And so it was, for it included songs like “Wok comrades” “We are building and “Cotton comes to Kimbia again.” With time and given Guyana’s small population, the Burnham approach to development which offered youth adventure and meaningful work would have forced the public service to seek workers outside of members of our youth population. Love or hate Burnham, there is no denying that with his passing we seem to have also lost our courage, our self –belief, our willingness to dream and act on those dreams. Today, Guyana and the entire English speaking Caribbean struggle to articulate a vision and initiate a program that effectively marry the strengths of youth and elderly in their national development efforts.
Mr. Editor, in closing let me react to two things I recently read: (a) President Granger opined that we have to find out why young people commit crime and (2) The intention of his government to create some sort of college for training public servants. Today many psychologists posit that the psychological needs of the young are not met by modern society. They argue that particularly for clerical workers technology has made work even more routine and devoid of challenge. For recreation, treks in the forest have routes marked by sign posts – risk is daily being eliminated and as a consequence opportunities for excitement and adventure are being squeezed out of our lives.
As this happens some young people will see anti -social behavior (including a resort to crime)as one of the few means left for satisfying their need for challenge and excitement. Perhaps we are already seeing a demonstration of this in the form of an alarming rise in the number of young criminals. Our search for the causes of crime has so far been limited to the traditional areas of poverty, unemployment, parental neglect, differential association etc. I encourage the president to recognize attention to these areas alone will not suffice. Also if the intent to create a college for public servants is to train young people for a future in the public service, for the reasons articulated above, I fear this will be another expensive and unproductive effort.
Today in Guyana we live day to day, doing each day what we did the day before. Our youths are not challenged and our elderly have essentially been told “you have lost your usefulness.” Both generations exist in a state of hopelessness. And our politicians seem confused, lost.
Claudius Prince

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