Dear Editor
IT is the serious undertaking of the David Granger-led administration in leading this country towards becoming an “education nation.”
Most people who have the conciousness knows, that in order for a country to develop, regardless of how rich it may be in its possession of natural resources, it must invest in the education of its people — its most valuable resource.

For a country and its people to achieve its developmental apex and truly become self-sufficient, looking towards the future with confidence, investment in education is most pivotal. Mr Editor, it is of utmost importance that our people be made aware or be reminded, that the state of our country’s education sector before 2014 was very bleak.

The PPP/C administration committed an assault on Guyana’s education system from their embryonic state in government. From 1994, they violated the constitution–our supreme law–and denied Guyanese the right of free education from nursery to university, which is guaranteed by the constitution.  The PPP clearly did not make education a priority; they underpaid teachers, did shabby works on school buildings and spent 10-15 billion Guyana dollars less on education than the current APNU+AFC coalition government. Additionally, they even took away the law subsidy from the law students at the University of Guyana in the early 2000s.

Mr Editor, the Bureau of Statistics conducted its first Labour Force Survey in the latter half of 2017. Its findings revealed that 48.3 per cent of the working population has only primary education, while 9.9%  never attended school. It was found that about a quarter of the working-age population has upper secondary education, but only 2.8%, excluding the PPP/C’S presidential candidate, has a Bachelor’s degree or above. The unemployment rate for persons aged 15 and above was 12 per cent. Youth unemployment rates were higher than the average unemployment rates for both men and women. The youth unemployment rate for men was 17.3 percent, while that for women was 28 percent.

(https://www.kaieteurnewsonline.com/2018/09/10/more-than-half-of-guyanas-work-force-has-only-primary-education/) .
The link between education and crime has been documented by scholars for decades. Clearly, the benefits of education are not only for our students but also for the development of society. Firstly, education increases one’s likelihood of gaining legitimate employment.

It can be seen from the Bureau of Statistics survey done in 2017, that many of these students did not attend high school and thus there was a high percentage of unemployment. Youths, who are deprived of legitimate means to achieve their goals, often turn to illegitimate means (crime).

In a disturbing similarity, the latest figures published by the Prison Reform Trust of the UK, revealed that more than half (51%) the number of people entering prison has the literacy skills of an 11-year-old. The report also stated that 42 per cent of prisoners has a history of being permanently excluded from school and one of five children in custody has learning difficulties.

Statistics from Europe and the United States highlight the strong connection between the lack of education and crime. In 1997, 75 per cent of State and 59 per cent of federal prison inmates in the U.S. did not have a high school diploma (Harlow 2003). In 2001, more than 75 per cent of convicted persons in Italy had not completed high school (Buonanno and Leonida 2006), while incarceration rates among men aged 21-25 in the United Kingdom were more than eight times higher for those without an education qualification (Machin, Marie and Vujic 2011).

Under the PPP administration, Jagdeo was busy attending to his chosen few and simply left our children behind, just like the no-child-left-behind policy that encouraged the promotion of failure of our children. He was busy building the Marriott that we didn’t need; building a cricket stadium to later facilitate his friend Bobby Ramroop’s CPL; he was busy  repairing the Sanata Textile property for US$5 million and selling it back to this said friend for US$3.4 million in a case of ‘voodoo ecomonics/ jumbie mathematics’ (https://www.kaieteurnewsonline.com/2014/01/03/the-sanata-complex-giveaway/); he was busy selling land to private developers instead of to the 25,000 Guyanese citizens who had applied and were waiting in vain. He simply put the nation’s youth and education on the back burner.

Jagdeo cannot tell us one thing that he did for young people. Jagdeo’s legacy will always remain one of unsolved crimes, drugs, phanton killings, white elephant projects and a host of other alleged illegalities. During the PPP administration our youth saw no glimmer of hope and many of them whose minds were not enriched with knowledge, sadly embraced a life of crime and a get-rich-or die-trying philosophy.

In Guyana we see men in their late teens and early 20s committing numerous robberies. This is the generation that Jagdeo did not invest in; this is the generation that the PPP failed to cater for.

Mr Editor, our problem with crime did not happen overnight, but is rooted in the neglect of the PPP/C government towards our young people and the education system. The fact that not everyone is  academically inclined, there were many community high schools, technical institutes, where children learned a trade. Due to the PPP’s lack of vision and understanding of the education system, they decommissioned those community high schools and provided limited resources to those technical institutes, and as a consequence children who were not academically inclined were simply left behind.

With no CXC qualifications and no trade, many of them turned to a life of crime. The PPP even discontinued the subsidy for law students of the University of Guyana…Why Jagdeo? Do you have an answer for this, or was it by design to leave the people ignorant, and others to remain as cane-cutters?

The APNU+AFC government has been serious about education from day one.  the President’s 6Bs programme has been very successful and effective. From 2015 we have been giving books, school bags, bicycles, boats, buses and most importantly , primary school students have been receiving breakfast in school every day; now several secondary schools provide lunch to students. It must be reiterated that the APNU+AFC government has spent 10-15 billion more on education than the PPP.

President Granger’s vision is to develop Guyana through education and he sees our nation’s youth as a very important asset in nation building. His Excellency’s commitment to restore free tertiary education, investment in the Kuru Kuru skills-training college, laptops to teachers, investment in STEM, robotics, sports, synthetic tracks, etc, is evidence of his vision for an education nation.

Regards
Jermaine Figueira
Member of Parliament
Region 10 (Upper Demerara-Upper Berbice).