President David Granger on Friday told a Regional Youth Caucus that government is interested in developing opportunities for young people to be involved in the process of governance.
“Your government is interested in ensuring that young people become a lifeline of this country’s economic, political and social transformation. The state must support young people to help them to assume greater responsibility and to prepare them to bear the burden of leadership,” he told more than 300 young persons gathered at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre.
The Caucus, organised by “One Youth,” the youth arm of the APNU+AFC coalition, was convened under the theme, “Connect; Reflect; Project: Advancing youth participation in National Development.”
The participants were given the opportunity to engage in seven thematic group discussions, which addressed issues such as the youth perspective on governance and development in Guyana, crafting an agenda for violence reduction and prevention, planning to achieve sustainable development, access to and support of entrepreneurship opportunities for youth and the mainstreaming of sports and culture.
President Granger, who delivered a 40-minute feature address, stressed that if Guyana is to prosper and if young people are to be given the opportunity to lead, a fresh approach to governance must be adopted.
“The emphasis must be on reinforcing the four cornerstones of youth development – education, equality, empowerment and employment,” he explained, adding that “government, for this reason, has pursued a strategy of regional development and that is why today, the 300 of you here have not come from one region but from all ten regions.”
Granger stressed that as part of its aim to develop all 10 regions, government is working to develop capital towns in all regions.
“Guyana is not two countries – a developed one east of the Essequibo and an underdeveloped one west of the Essequibo,” the president noted, adding that the establishment of capital towns and the renewal of local democracy countrywide go hand-in-hand and they are engines of transformation and economic growth.
“Young people are vital to ensuring a strong nation of strong regions… therefore, [they] must prepare themselves to work in the ‘engine rooms’ of local, regional and national development. Government exists at three levels, at the neighbourhood or village level, municipal level and at the regional level and at the level of the central government. So, it is good that you could enter at the local level and then you go up to the regional level and when I come back, you’d be sitting at the central government level. That is where it starts, so don’t miss out on your apprenticeship level because that is how you get here in the front row,” he outlined for participants.
According to the Head of State, youth empowerment will help to equip young people with the skills, attitudes and values which are needed for them to become leaders so that, when placed in positions of leadership, they could cope successfully with its demands.
