Dear Editor,
Scoring on the Youth Playing Field
According to the press report, the Minister within the Office of the Prime Minister ‘rapped’ the Leader of the Opposition regarding disparaging comments about the status of youths in the society.
In the former’s peroration he is reported to have remarked as follows:
“Programmes such as the Guyana Online Academy of Learning (GOAL) providing thousands of world class scholarships – from Certificate to PhD levels, the Board of Industrial Training TVET certification programme – aimed at upskilling and empowering hundreds of youths in every administrative region; the dozens of Women’s Entrepreneurial initiatives introduced across the country by the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security, and the young professionals and low-income turnkey housing drives in all of our regions among others”.
Once again one is attracted to the persistent reference to the ambitious GOAL programme, previously much highlighted by, for example, the Minister of Education.
It was in August 2021 that there was published the comprehensive 20 page Supplement announcing the availability of these scholarship awards to the following Universities:
1) International University of Applied Sciences, Germany
2) Jain University of India
3) UWI Open Campus
4) University of Southern Caribbean
5) Indira Gandhi National Open University
6) Sherlock Institute of Forensic Science
7) Structuralia Universidad Internacional Isabeli, Spain
8) UNICAF University and Partners (Malawi, Uganda, Zambia, UK)
9) Texila American University, Guyana
Together the total of 108 programmes range from Certificates to Masters; and from two months to three years. The respective periodicities are distributed as follows: 3 years – 22; 2 years – 23; then 1 year – 28; 6 months – 33; 4 months – 1; and 2 months – 1.
So at this point in time it should be reasonable to expect reports on the results of the 64 programmes which range from 2 months to 1 year.
The Universities to which awards of the shorter programme were reported to be made include the following:
Jain University of India – 36 programmes of 1-3 years
UWI Open Campus – 22 six month programmes
Indira Gandhi National Open University – 25 programmes ranging from 6 months to 3 years. They include 120 awardees to a two month programme in Motor Cycle Service and Repair; 450 awards to the Certificate Course in Food and Nutrition.
In the circumstances it seems an opportune time to more effectively incite youths wherever, to seize their chances, by emphasizing the successes achieved so far. Not only youths, but adults and communities at large deserve to know for example, what job levels would have been achieved. There is the remarkable absence of the usual photographs of any group of ‘certificated’ achievers, an exercise that would obviously lend credibility to such a developmental project.
In the process it would do no harm to widen invitation to opportunities in the TVET programme.
In the final analysis however, one depletive nuance to the Administration’s communication exercise is that it utilized a junior representative to remonstrate, so to speak, the highest level of the opposition.
Yours faithfully,
E.B. John
