The National Youth Service (NYS) was closed down during the 1980s as one of the programmes that Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) felt did not deserve to continue.  Then Prime Minister Edward Seaga created his own signature programme HEART.  During the 1990s after a series of surveys, there was such an overwhelming national demand for the return of the NYS that the People’s National Party in government, under the watch of the most thoughtful of Jamaica’s prime ministers, Percival James Patterson, that the NYS was reinstituted.

It was part of my happy privilege to have played a role in setting up the NYS as a statutory body.  A curriculum was developed that was aimed at instilling and inculcating among unattached Jamaican young people, values that would help them integrate and become part of building social harmony in the Jamaican society.  Early tracer studies indicated that the cost then of J$70,000 per young person to reintegrate them into the job market and generally to take their place in the Jamaican society was money well spent.

The NYS was not an exercise in postponed marginality, which means that after six months or so in some pampered experience, trainees would return to the habits they had before entering the programme.  Instead many young persons became members of the uniformed services entered tertiary institutions and generally became productive and integrated citizens.

To the eternal credit of the PNP it did not feel any need to simultaneously renew and expand the NYS, which was created by a previous PNP administration and at one and the same time diminish HEART, which was created by its political opposite.   It expanded HEART, which became under their watch HEART/NTA (National Training Agency) simultaneously with strengthening the NYS and adding JAMVAT among other programmes to the menu of options for the 17 to 24 age group cohort.

Terminations

During my watch as NYS executive director, I believed in the importance of a complete buy-in for the NYS by all key stakeholders including the then political opposition, the JLP.  I remember taking now minister with responsibility for the NYS, then Opposition spokesman, Andrew Holness by helicopter to Chester Vale (Eco Village) Youth Camp in the Blue Mountains where 300 NYS volunteers were being trained for opportunities in the uniformed services.

I remember Andrew Holness remarking then, something he has repeated since, that the NYS is a programme that is responding to a real need and deserves support including expanded fiscal support — that is, a larger budget, across political administrations.

Those are easy words to repeat until the logic of political opportunism, clientellism combined with an embedded media set in.  What has been done to the NYS under the watch of this minister who paid lip service to its expansion and continuation?  The record deserves to speak for itself.  In the last six months 11 of the 24 members of staff of the National Youth Service have been terminated or generally had cause to separate from their jobs at the NYS.

All 11 posts were filled immediately, most without any public advertisements and none with persons whose qualification and experience were similar let alone superior to those from whom the institution has separated.  The staff of the NYS have been intimidated, excoriated, generally put in a situation of instability much of it has lacked any real cause, none of it has shown regard for their dignity, as Jamaicans and their rights as workers.

The Rev Adinhair Jones, who was once nominated by a media house for outstanding and exemplary leadership to Jamaica, as executive director of the NYS was subjected to what has become a trademark of the JLP administration in its treatment of public servants, public embarrassment and undignified dismissal.  There were three others of the senior managers of the NYS who were part of that public lynching.

Since then, police have detained members of staff and released without charges being proffered and generally subject to treatment associated with Gestapo type operations.  Those 13 members of staff who remain are on a week-by-week arrangement.  They were advised that they would have been told their fate a week ago Thursday, but like the staff of Air Jamaica, the sword of Damocles still hangs over them.

The savage mistreatment of the powerless Jamaicans that happen to work for the NYS is compounded by the policy confusion surrounding the NYS.  It seems that the policy shift intends to merge the NYS with the recently announced CAP initiative.  This is an initiative of HEART and the Jamaica Foundation for Lifelong Learning, formerly JAMAL.  So far, 23 per cent of the budget of the NYS has been shunted to this programme.

The IDB conducted a study recently among NYS volunteers currently in the programme and found that hopelessness and despair among the participants were palpable and widespread.  This is because of the policy uncertainty surrounded the programme.

Impending demise

If the recent recruits are anything to go by, it seems that the NYS is about to breathe its last but just before that it has become a political feeding tree.  It is being used to give connected parties, perhaps lower level, a place to rest for the time being.  No camps are being held and watered down version of non-residential programmes are being used to save face.

The easiest thing would be to blame the demise of the NYS on the IMF.  The IMF has done and will do enormous damage to social investment but this is not one of them.  This is the JLP returning to the habits of the past.  What they did not start, must not be allowed to continue and those not clearly and knowingly connected to them must not be allowed to eat bread.

There are those who speak about the Jamaican indomitability.  I have no doubt that, at least in spurts, residue of that indomitability still shows up from time to time.  What I see of the Jamaican young people, it seems to me that a job of work has been done on the Jamaican population.  It should surprise none of us that cowardice has become the warp and woof Jamaican society.  If this cowardice were not so deeply embedded in the psyche of our people, how would one explain the free reign that murderous criminals have been able to enjoy in Jamaica for these many years?

I was struck this week of how tolerant the Jamaican population and the Trinidadian population have become of murders.  Barbados had 19 murders in the whole of 2009, Jamaica had 1680 with ten times the population of Barbados and Trinidad had close to 600 murders with a population of four times that of Barbados.  Murder thrives because cowardice is entrenched within the population.

It is this cowardice that has allowed the young people of the NYS to be trampled on and mistreated while they remain silent.  The entire Jamaican population is afraid of its collective shadow.  They are afraid to speak, because they do not want to speak and be singled out for exemplary punishment.  They are afraid to speak because they are afraid that members of the criminal militia will be sent to come and get them.  They probably will whether or not they speak.

The Government has erred.  Its treatment of the NYS and its mistreatment of the staff of the NYS are grave errors.  It will pay a heavy price.  The Jamaica it is creating by cruelty and malfeasant will come back to haunt it and the rest of us.  It is a matter of time.