Council says partnership agreement has youth focus

THE National Partnership Council has hit back at claims made by the National Youth Council of Jamaica (NYCJ) that the recently signed social partnership agreement does not address youth issues.

Chairman of the NYCJ, Ryan Small last week said that none of the six objectives of the agreement — inked by Government, civil society, trade unions, the private sector, and academia — showed that there was any recognition of and appreciation for youth as catalysts for social change.But speaking with the Jamaica Observer on Monday, youth representative on the council, Kemesha Kelly said nothing could be further from the truth.“The National Youth Council was one body I consulted to get feedback for the document,” she said during the newspaper’s weekly Monday Exchange.“Everything in this document has some bearing on Jamaican youth. At the end of the day, we talk about Vision 2030, it is the current crop of youth that will really realise Vision 2030 and this document has that visionary thrust as well. We have set these targets with consultation and youth participation,” she added.As an example, she pointed to the goal to reduce youth unemployment from the current 37 per cent to 25 per cent by 2016.“I’m particularly pleased that the partnership is so greatly concerned about youth unemployment and there is going to be great effort to bring that down. From the civil society perspective as well, [because] the document also focuses on female unemployment,” she said.The target is to bring female unemployment down from 17.8 per cent to 12 per cent, while the goal for general unemployment is to reduce the figure from 14.2 per cent to 10 per cent.Academia representative Professor Alvin Wint, who along with Kelly, labour union representative Oneil Grant and another academia rep Professor Neville Ying were guests at the Monday Exchange, also weighed in on the youth focus discussion.“I’ve heard comments that this is not for the youth [but it] is for the youth,” he reiterated.“We’re trying to create a Jamaica where Jamaicans will want to live and work and [do business]… but we have to move with greater assertiveness and aggression. And we need the energies of our young people to come on board,” he said.Asked how it intended to achieve the lower unemployment figures given the persistent softness of the economy, the council told the Observer that the strategy was not to consider unemployment in isolation, but in tandem with the other goals, including a reduction in murders, the debt-to-GDP ratio and the cost of energy, coupled with an increase in real economic growth and an improvement in the ease of doing business ranking.“We’re not trying to increase employment as an action in and of itself,” professor Wint explained.“We’re looking at it as part of a general programme of reforming and rebuilding and [reinjecting] confidence into the Jamaican economy and society to make people feel much more confident about the direction of the country,” he said, referencing the linkages between crime, security, economic stability and the ability to attract investors.“It’s important to understand that the whole thrust of this agreement is to harden the economy, to make it stronger, so these aren’t issues that are being considered in isolation of each other…If we don’t improve our regulatory environment, if we don’t improve our security, if we don’t improve our economic environment, we’re not going to get investment so that is why these things are all happening in tandem,” the professor stressed.Added to that, Wint said businesses make employment decisions based not only on current situations, but also on expected direction of the country at any particular point.“It’s not just that they have to see where the country is now, but they have to have some sense of where it is going. This is why this thrust is so important to rebuild confidence in where we are and where we’re going as a country, and this is why consensus is so important,” he told the Observer.And, he said, it’s “not beyond the realm of possibility” to achieve.“If you take unemployment, we’re at 14 per cent and the goal is to get to 10 per cent. But not too long ago we were at 11 per cent,” he argued.The partnership agreement was signed at King’s House last Wednesday after nearly two decades of dialogue.Public consultations on their elements and the way forward are to start within the next two months and youth advocate Kelly has committed to ensuring that the youth are duly represented in those fora.“It is important that all Jamaicans come on board to support this partnership and young people need to really throw their energies behind it,” she told the Exchange. “I’m going to make it my personal responsibility to ensure that young persons from across the length and breadth of Jamaica get involved in these consultations so their voices can be heard… Any strategy going forward must have the input of the young persons and their energy as well to achieve it.”(L-R) WINT… the partnership is for the youth. KELLY… everything in this document has some bearing on Jamaican youth (PHOTOS: NAPHTALI JUNIOR

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Council says partnership agreement has youth focus