…promises employment data bank, national mentoring programme in manifesto

By Lisa Hamilton
THROUGH its manifesto, the A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance for Change’s (APNU+AFC) is seeking to ensure that Guyanese youths are given the right tools to take up the country’s future leadership.

An array of original plans was put forward by the party, on Friday, and President David Granger has assured the public that the government has the resources and capability provide the same for Guyanese. One such is the creation of a dynamic and computerised National Employment Data Bank which will enable youths to see, in real time, all job opportunities available in the country and apply for them. “We have to hand this country over to you,” the President said to youths who attended the coalition’s rally earlier this month at the Diamond Market Tarmac. The Guyana Office for Investment (GO-Invest) estimates that between 2015 to 2018 some 15,000 jobs were created by the government through its programmes.

Meanwhile, agencies such as the Small Business Bureau (SBB) helped support this effort through loans and grants to over 200 businesses thereby creating over 500 jobs. To ensure that youths are skilled for employment or even entrepreneurship, the manifesto has projected the development of innovative and entrepreneurship training programmes for youth to enhance their ability to develop and earn a good living. The government has also promised to provide job-skills and life-skills training for all secondary school and technical institute students during their final year and will continue to provide scholarships for youths, with special focus on science, technology, engineering and the medical sciences.

AN EDUCATED NATION
Just in October 2019, the President donated $1M to the Saraswati Vidya Niketan (SVN) school for the expansion of its science programmes and to help equip its science laboratories then under construction and over $2M to Queen’s College (QC) for the advancement of science education.

“We need you all if you’re going to transform this country…Guyana will need new skills to populate occupations in the green environment, petroleum-producing and digital emerging economic sectors in the evolving State. It will need an ‘A-to-Z’ corps of scientists – from agronomists, architects, biologists, botanists, chemists, doctors, engineers, environmentalists, geneticists, geologists, hydrologists, information systems specialists, and physicists to zoologists – for transformational national development,” the President stated while present at the latter institution.

To ensure that Guyana continues to perform outstandingly
education-wise in the Region, the APNU+AFC’s manifesto has offered to engage the private sector in aims of increasing the number of internships granted annually to youths. Youths can use the opportunities to gain experience in the career fields they hope to pursue while the coalition has also promised to expand the National Work-Study Programme to increase the number of participating students.

This will be bolstered by the expansion of the Guyana Youth Corps, apprenticeship schemes, private sector partnerships and entrepreneurship schemes to reduce unemployment. “Education is top priority for me. It is essential if you are going to seek employment or be self-employed. It is essential if you are going to be empowered. It is essential if you are going to demand your place as equal citizens in this country,” the President said at the inaugural annual Youth Empowerment Summit (YES) in December 2019.

FOCUS ON SPORTS
In the document presented, the six-member coalition made it clear that the government does not only care about the academic performance of youths but their mental wellbeing. As such, the manifesto outlines plans for the provision of mandatory career counselling for all secondary school students; the establishment of a National Mentoring Programme to join youths with career mentors and to join youth-owned small businesses with larger companies and the development of additional community centres to provide safe spaces for young people to meet and socialise.

Within the last four years, 674 community grounds across the country have been rehabilitated under the Department of Sport’s ground enhancement project to the tune of $500M.

“This is in keeping with the mandate of the National Sports Commission’s Act which speaks to creating an enabling environment for the advancement of sports and there are spin-off benefits to that,” the Sports Director, Christopher Jones had stated in late 2019.

Re-elected, the government promises to implement a national playfield programme to rehabilitate, maintain and secure community playfields for athletes and the general public to train, play sports and exercise during both daylight and evening hours. Also in the area of sport, the manifesto has highlighted that the government will provide stipends and sports gear to all national athletes and will ensure that every secondary school has designated coaches and physical education teachers.

The manifesto also promises to reintroduce musical arts, fine arts and theatrical arts in schools across Guyana. The President advised in 2019: “All around the world people are moving away from petroleum and you better learn that lesson that petroleum, whatever bonanza, whatever profits, whatever revenues we get, will not last forever. So, we have to put in place the type of development that would take us beyond petroleum. That is why I deliberately chose a ‘Decade of Development’, not a year of development [but] a decade because by 2030 this country must be more developed than it is at present.”