Grenada Minister of Youth Empowerment, Culture and Sport Patrick Simmons, in his capacity as Chairman of the Council for Human and Social Development (COHSOD), has called on his colleague ministers to take stock and “do business differently, to get things done the right way and at the right time.”
Delivering the main address at a Special Meeting of the COHSOD, Simmons implored his colleague ministers to take a serious look at themselves as well as the role and functions of the COHSOD in national and regional development, the CARICOM Secretariat at Turkeyen said in a news release.
The COHSOD was meeting in Paramaribo, Suriname to discuss the report of the CARICOM Commission on Youth Development and to consider the policy implications of the report, in order to advise Heads of Government on appropriate actions based on the findings of the report.
The Heads of Government met at a Special Summit on Youth Development on Friday and Saturday also in Paramaribo.
According to Simmons, the COHSOD was established to provide dynamic leadership for national development and should be more proactive in ensuring that effective policies in human and social development are formulated and implemented.
However, he noted, the COHSOD did not have a success rate in policy implementation and in instances where policies were implemented, and had failed to monitor their impact.
“The previous policies and mandates coming out of this COHSOD for the most part have either not been implemented at the national level or have not been monitored to ensure their workability and effectiveness, hence their impacts have been less than minimal,” the release quoted Simmons as saying.
He also stressed the need for his colleague ministers to use the COHSOD wisely to shape policies and to enhance and monitor implementation of policies, especially those related to youth development.
To do so, he said, the COHSOD must forge effective partnerships and collaboration. Millions of dollars, he added, were spent on youth interventions but little returns were gained because of the failure to involve youth in their own programmes.
“Perhaps, and arguably so, the problem lies in the haphazard way in which we tackle the youth agenda, and even more crucial perhaps, we have been talking about youth, formulating policies for youth to improve the situation of youth without hearing from and involving the youth themselves, without engaging and involving them in the development of solutions to their own problems,” the Chair of the COHSOD concluded.
