Saint Lucian economist and award-winning author Dr. Anderson Reynolds alongside Alexander Clarke, business innovator have embarked on a series of articles that provide pointers and highlight some pitfalls that the government should consider in helping to foster the youth economy.
The government recently launched the Youth Economy initiative, with Taiwan making a pledge in the sum of EC$5.4 million to help fund the venture. This is all in keeping with the St Lucia Labour Party (SLP) 2021 election and manifesto pledge of building the youth economy, which the authors view as not “just a campaign gimmick or a substitute for not having a credible and inspiring vision for the country.”
Reports indicate that St. Lucia’s youth (15 to 29) unemployment rate for the last five pre-COVID years averaged about 37%, which means that over one-third of the youths were jobless but actively seeking employment. Likewise, it states, poverty is common among the youths. In 2016, compared to a national average of 25%, 35% of youths ages 15 to 19 lived in poverty, and so did 29% of those ages 20 to 24.
According to research sources, young people are both the “primary victims and perpetrators of crimes in the Caribbean, where about 80% of crimes are committed by persons ages 17 to 29.”
With so many of “our youth unemployed and living in poverty, it should surprise no one that crime has become one of the country’s most serious problems,” say the authors.
Over the 2010-2019 period, St. Lucia registered about 40 murders per year, corresponding to a homicide rate of 23.2 murders (per 100k population), which was more than twice that of Barbados and more than quadruple that of the U.S. In a study (based on 2018 data) evaluating crime and safety in Barbados and the six independent Eastern Caribbean states, St. Lucia ranked third in murder rate and sexual assaults and first in robberies.
While noting that many aspects of a subscribed ‘Youth Economy’, have been implemented to varying standards by government administrations, business and NGOs, the authors caution that before launching new initiatives “we need to take stock of what already exists or what have been implemented in the past.”
Initiatives cited include, the National Initiative to Create Employment (NICE), in which the 2011 Kenny Anthony government had implemented a wide range of employment expansion measures geared toward the youth, including apprenticeships and training programs for crop production, small engine boat maintenance, multimedia production, customer service office administration, and beauty therapy; farm labor support whereby unemployed workers were first trained in agricultural works and then offered employment on “dormant, inactive, or underdeveloped farms”.
Other ventures include, the Christmas private sector employment for students; student summer employment; and training for employment in the cruise-ship sector. Aside from these measures, the government had hoped to establish a National Job Placement Center, implement a Land Bank Program to engage young persons to work in high value-added agriculture, and also a Business Grants Program to incentivize businesses to provide job skills training to secondary school students.
In recent years, the authors’ state, the island has been blessed with several new training institutions, both private and public, namely National Skills Development Center (NSDC), Monroe College, and Springboard Training Institute. In addition, a host of apprenticeship/training programs targeting the youth of the country have been established, including the Junior Achievement Program (JA-SLU), St. Lucia Youth Business Trust (SLYBT), National Apprenticeship Program (NAP), Youth Agri-Entrepreneurship Program (YAEP), Hospitality Apprenticeship Program for Youth (H.A.P.Y), and Caribbean Youth Empowerment Program (CYEP).
According to the authors, though these initiatives can be expected to help build the youth economy, however “they reflect a fundamental flaw in how we have gone about addressing the nation’s problems.”
They add that, “Our attempted solutions are piecemeal, disjointed, far short of what is required, short-lived, rarely lasting longer than one election cycle because the new incoming administration invariably replaces inherited programs with their own measures.” They argue that such procedures are intended, to “allow them to reap full political credit and reward their people with jobs and contracts and themselves with kickbacks.”
Reynolds and Clarke noted that the Youth Economy boils down to one issue—employment, and that apparently “the government’s main focus will be self-employment.”
However, the authors say the “initiative is of great merit, for it is both forward or future looking and encourages youths to create their own employment instead of simply relying on the job market … we hope that with this much-touted initiative the prime minister will seize the opportunity to break with the past, and, taking a page from universal secondary education, go beyond simply facilitating youth entrepreneurs, and design and implement an action plan that comprehensively resolves our problem of youth unemployment, with self-employment as just one piece of the puzzle.”
The writers insist that in St Lucia, there is a “minimalist attitude” that limits one’s ability to excel and to be competitive. They say there is a tendency to put in the least amount of effort, to use the least quantity and quality of inputs, and to pay the least attention to detail as would just barely get the job done.
“That’s good enough;” “we don’t have, so that’s the best we can do;” “that’s just the way things are in Lucia,” appears to be “our modus operandi and maybe our excuse for mediocrity. So understandably quality suffers,” they add.
Reynolds and Clarke further assert that, “It must be about taking full stock of our employment and economic situation, and devising a dedicated, comprehensive, concerted long-term plan of action that spans administrations and is invariant to them—plan of actions with stipulated achievement targets (number of jobs to be created) and timeframes by which targets are to be met.”