The debate over the defunct Guyana National Service seems never to have gone away. It was revived last month by Major General Joseph Singh who spoke on the theme “Reflecting on the Guyana National Service: Burnham’s Vision 35 years after,” at the commemoration ceremony for the death anniversary of late President Forbes Burnham. General Singh hailed President Burnham’s vision for the national service as a vehicle to promote the concept of the new Guyana man and woman who understood their role in nation-building. That vision, he said, is still valid today.
General Singh served as both Director General of the Guyana National Service and Chief of Staff of the Guyana Defence Force when the national service was abolished, and previously proposed the service’s re-establishment. Addressing the Tourism and Hospitality Association of Guyana some time ago, he described his own vision for a new national service based at Omai in the hinterland. He thought then that the site and the service could be used to conduct vocational training for unemployed or unemployable youth.
Despite General Singh’s fresh call for the service’s re-establishment, few in the administration seem to share his enthusiasm. President Bharrat Jagdeo some time ago responded to criticisms of his administration for abolishing the national service by saying “If you put them [young people] back into the national service, the focus tends to be more marching and walking etc. I want them to learn to read a balance sheet or how to manage money or learn some skill.”
Former Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport Gail Teixeira once explained the administration’s rationale for abolishing the service saying that it had “lost its importance since the 1980s” and had discontinued serious technical-vocational training. It was during her tenure as minister, and General Singh’s tenure as Chief of Staff, that the strange decision was taken in March 1999 to restructure the service and, in May 2000, to scrap it completely.
The Guyana National Service, of course, was much more than marching and walking. Singh recalled touring the service’s extensive cotton, black-eye and peanut cultivation during President Burnham’s visit to Kimbia saying, “The evidence was before us: land that was scrub and savannah 12 years before was supporting a thriving centre populated by hundreds of staff and pioneers, a major agricultural production base with processing facilities for cotton and peanuts, a primary school, day-care centre, medical centre, housing and other facilities for staff and manifesting the profile of an evolving township.”
Why did all these things disappear? How could a large government department on which millions were expended for over a quarter century and which possessed numerous buildings, vehicles, agricultural and mechanical appliances, farmlands and other property be brought to a halt? What happened to its abundant harvests and ample assets?
Unlike the service’s start in 1974 which was introduced openly by a state paper in the National Assembly, the closure was shrouded. Now, eight years later, General Singh has called for “a serious and dispassionate examination of the lessons learnt, drawing from the experiences of those who passed through this institution and, armed with the facts, engage in dialogue and debate to evolve an adaptation of the national service as one preferred option toward resolving some of the pressing issues of our time.”
This raises questions about how much thought went in to solving the youth problem that the national service was meant to address in the first place. There is little doubt many school-leavers are unprepared to participate fully in the world of work and that there is serious youth unemployment. The public safety dividend of reintroducing national service would be that many young males who might have been seduced into a criminal career could be retrained for less risky economic employment.
There certainly needs to be a serious rethink about an institutional mechanism to deal with youth unemployment. The administration should listen to General Singh’s friendly advice.
