There is a need for something like the National Service with training objectives for young people - Granger
Current Affairs August 2004
Stabroek News
August 18, 2004
A few months ago a former Director General of the Guyana National Service (GNS), former Chief of Staff of the Guyana Defence Force Maj Gen (rtd) Joe Singh sparked discussions on the revival of the GNS. He suggested that the government should take over the facilities at Omai Gold Mines Limited when its operations closed down to set up a training centre for vocational skills for young people.
Singh's proposal was made out of concern at the high level of unemployment among young people in general and particularly among the young people of the Linden community, the economic fortunes of which had nose-dived over the past decade or so.
Singh is not alone in the concern about the high level of unemployment among the nation's young people, most of whom have no marketable skills, a deficiency which the GNS was originally set up to address.
Addressing a public forum on the Guyana National Service at the City Hall on August 8, Brig (retd) David Granger said there is certainly still a need for some scheme with training objectives similar to those with which the original GNS was launched 30 years ago. The symposium was one of the commemorative activities to mark the nineteenth death anniversary of Guyana's first President with executive power, Forbes Burnham OE, SC. The GNS was Burnham's brainchild. It was a not uncritical assessment of the GNS and in his presentation Granger traced the seeds of its decline during the Burnham years to its death knell under the present government.
A graduating class of GNS Nurse Trainees
He argued that consideration should be given to establishing a service capable of preparing thousands of school-leavers to be fully and gainfully employed. To do otherwise would only convince the Guyanese public that the Administration was determined to wipe out the Guyana National Service, systematically, because it was always opposed to its establishment.
In his presentation, Granger traced the origins of the GNS which was established in 1974 and was immediately seen by some "as an instrument to transform the Guyana society in accordance with then Prime Minister Forbes Burnham's vision and his party's political programme at the time.
He explained that the GNS was established with the broad aim of creating the `new Guyana man' and that its training programmes "were meant to be geared towards ensuring the achievement of such national benefits as utilising human and natural resources by developing skills, fostering unity, true democracy and full equality based on hard work and co-operation."
In this way, Granger said that it was somehow thought that it would be possible to erase racial prejudice; ensure self-reliance by increasing production; educate and assist citizens to contribute to national objectives through self-help and co-operatives; develop patriotism among the populace; foster hinterland townships and settlements; and prepare persons to participate in national defence.
As envisaged by its architects, according to Granger, the National Service set out to emphasise values such as national unity, self-determination, collective work, responsibility, and faith - as well as those of discipline, efficiency and production.
He said that at different levels and with varying intensity and techniques, the main training offered to all corps was to comprise agriculture, co-operativism, culture, military skills, national policy, sports and technical and vocational skills.
The GNS' first training centre was established at Kimbia in 1974 and Granger said that there was a rapid expansion of the training centres at Konawaruk, Tumatumari, Papaya, Hope, East Coast Demerara, Sophia and Koriri among other places.
In tandem with the rapid expansion of the GNS Young Brigade and National Cadet Corps throughout the school system it also became involved in a number of business activities as diverse as agriculture, stone quarrying, sawmilling and woodworking, printing and publishing and gold mining.
Granger said that the GNS because of its structure and training initially "made a positive contribution in training young people and in producing some commodities to feed itself.
However he said that the ambitious attempt to cultivate 1,012 hectares (2,500 acres) of cotton, and various other crops such as corn, legumes, sorghum and peanuts and breeding poultry, swine and other livestock at its various centres and farms sowed the seeds of its eventual demise.
"The Service acquired expensive equipment such as a cotton gin, tractors, harvesters and dryers and bought mountains of fertilizers, weedicides and stockfeed for its agricultural enterprises."
Also, he said, like its commercial production efforts, the GNS' education role was no less demanding. "By making national service obligatory for students who wished to graduate from the University, School of Agriculture, Nursing School and for all other categories of state-sponsored scholars, in addition to hundreds of volunteer entrants, hundreds of new entrants had to be equipped, housed, fed and trained every year."
Achievement
Describing its achievements, Granger said that during its less than 25-year history, "the GNS trained over 20,000 young citizens, nearly 37 per cent of whom were students of educational institutions - University of Guyana (UG); Guyana School of Agriculture (GSA); Georgetown Hospital Nursing School - and Public Service Ministry (PSM) scholarship winners.
He said too that of that number "about 52 per cent were 'basic' pioneers, young men and women for whom training "in vocational and technical skills, along with other values, provided a foundation for employment, if not self-esteem."
Granger pointed out that between 1974 and 1985, nearly 14,000 or 70 per cent of all trainees graduated from the GNS as compared with the period 1993-1999, when fewer than 2,000 or 10 per cent, graduated, indicating the decline in interest and support from the Administration.
"There has been no indication, so far, of the consequences of the new arrangements. Indeed, unemployment among urban, rural and hinterland youth persisted even as the capacity to recruit pioneers and conduct for training was declining from 1985 to 1995. The trends towards ethnic unity and sharing common national ideals among the youth were also apparently in decline."
Criticism
The various activities the GNS undertook during the period of its rapid expansion, Granger explained, had to be financed by the Government and just as important "put a strain on the slender managerial resources of the Service, which was ceaselessly criticised by some political and civic groups over the induction of girls and women, its compulsory character, military training, ideological orientation and the quality of education it was thought to offer."
He said that there was sustained political opposition to the Service by the People's Progressive Party (PPP) throughout its years in opposition and cited Janet Jagan's description of it as "a PNC para-military force to back up the coercive apparatus of the State in
it. He said some university and other students who, under the conditions of their contracts were required to do a stint of 'national service', were reluctant to accept the Service's objectives and approached the programme with hesitation or even hostility.
Policy drift
Granger questioned the effectiveness of the GNS' programmes, the emphasis of which seemed to have been changed from education to production, in complementing the education system and in helping the trainees to experience the desired attitudinal change and acquire the skills necessary to become patriotic and productive citizens.
He noted that in the 1970s there had already been a shift in emphasis towards industrial, commercial and agricultural enterprise and opines that it contributed to the GNS's decline.
Granger explained that the GNS' period of fastest growth was between 1974-1982 but explained that by the early 1980s, Guyana was in "the grip of grave economic recession and political unrest arising from a mismanaged economy, manipulated elections and the migration of educated and skilled persons from the country."
"For much of the period 1982-1990, the GNS went into decline. Particularly, the influence and scope of the Service's activities were contracted to conform to the economic recovery programme (ERP) taking place in the country under President Desmond Hoyte (1985-1992).
He said that all of the main areas of the Service's work were reduced. "The main hinterland settlements - Koriri, Konawaruk, Tumatumari and Papaya - were closed and abandoned and the schools at Arakaka and Kaituma were handed back to the Government. Even Kimbia - the mother of all centres - could not be maintained satisfactorily. As a result, an important platform for hinterland training and settlement was removed. "
Production slowly petered out. "Gold-mining; stone-quarrying, farming, printing and manufacturing closed down and, with them, any thought that the Service could make even a token contribution to its own economic subsistence, much less state revenue."
Unfortunately, Granger said "much of the accumulated talent and technology for producing these crops and commodities was not transferred to farmers or workers, and the expensive experiences of the GNS were lost to posterity".
"Worst of all, perhaps, training of unemployed rural and urban youths in the Pioneer Corps was reduced. The school-based Young Brigade and National Cadet Corps were also dismantled. Tertiary and university students' training was scaled down. 'Service' was transformed into `placement' of internees at corporations, schools and offices. In fact, the GNS soon ceased to play any meaningful role in training young people."
Terminal stage
Granger said that the GNS entered its terminal stage when the PPP took over the reins of government in October 1992. The activities of the GNS were reviewed further: "especially looking at its limited potential for the meaningful involvement of our young people in their own development and that of the nation". The Administration's response to this review seemed to put the original objectives of the GNS in jeopardy.
How did the GNS idea die?
Granger surmised that the absence of a National Service Act and the probability that the National Service Board was never appointed possibly deprived the Service of the legal and regulatory framework it needed to survive and thrive beyond the exuberance of its establishment.
Moreover, he said that the tension between education, on the one hand, and production on the other, seems never to have been managed satisfactorily with the result of a diminution of governmental supervision and the dimming of the ideological vision. As a consequence, he said, the Service was damned.
"The agricultural, educational and technical programmes, for example, although supported by a cadre of experts, may not always have benefited from the results of research which would have required years of patient trials and experimentation".
Moreover, he said that the mainly former police and military officers and government officials in decision-making positions, trained in law enforcement, military and administrative skills, could not be expected to quickly become fully competent managers of large-scale agricultural, manufacturing, quarrying and mining enterprises. "They were bound to make mistakes and the greater the number of activities undertaken the greater the number of mistakes made. The large number of service personnel to be administered, the vast distances to be travelled, the wide range of activities to be managed would have challenged even older and more experienced corporations. "
As a consequence he opined that it may never be known whether some of the enterprises might ever have been viable in the first place or were always doomed to become liabilities which could not be sustained.
Last rites
Granger said that the PPP, which had consistently opposed several aspects of the GNS, delivered the death blow when it entered office and it was therefore no great surprise when the Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport informed the nation of the government's plan to rename and re-structure the Service. "Supposedly this was being done, the public was told, to sharpen its focus on technical and vocational skills training, camping and adventure-type activities for young people."
In 1994, Granger explained that the PPPC Administration directed that the training of pioneers and other activities at Kimbia, the GNS's one-time premier centre, be removed to Kuru-Kuru on the Soesdyke-Linden Highway because it was felt that it was uneconomical to sustain operations at Kimbia. In addition, it was directed that, because of its role in providing special education, the GNS should be incorporated within the Ministry of Education.
"Apparently, apart from a few co-coordinating meetings and paperwork, nothing decisive was done to bring this directive into effect, so the GNS continued its activities at its remaining three locations: in Georgetown where the headquarters, the Sophia centre and the sports centre in Thomas Lands were located; at Kuru Kuru where pioneers were trained for one year in technical and vocational skills, in a residential setting; and at Onderneeming at which deviant juveniles are provided with rehabilitative training and education."
Later, Granger said it was decided that the Service's name be changed, that it be stripped of its para-military trappings and be converted totally into a civilian entity, surmising that it may have been the Administration's hope that the new organisation would be able to access funds and technical support from a variety of multilateral and bilateral agencies.
He said that several changes were announced such as the one-year programme at the Kuru Kuru Training Centre being reduced to allow for more youths to be trained and, in addition, the new Service was to embark on a programme of training in situ.
Another change was the organisation of the New Opportunity Corps at Onderneeming as a training school and the centre at Kuru Kuru being used to rehabilitate first offenders.