 guyana hopes to invest more cash in youth empowerment from scrapped sugar subsidy oil revenues ramjattan guyana hopes to invest more cash in youth empowerment from scrapped sugar subsidy oil revenues ramjattan guyana hopes to invest more cash in youth empowerment from scrapped sugar subsidy oil revenues ramjattan webmaster sun 7162017 1218 guyana hopes to surpass trinidad and tobago and jamaica in the amount of monies it gives to youth empowerment and employment by scrapping a multibillion dollar subsidy to the stateowned sugar corporation guysuco and injecting more funds from oil revenues when production begins in 2020 public security minister khemraj ramjattan says this why we are making sure that the bailouts now that we are having on sugar will have to come to a halt and understand that he said to applause wednesday night at a university of guyanaorganised public forum on youth crime and violence we will not be bailing out sugar and we have a plan for that and so there will be some more money that can go into some other sectors and rest assured that we are going to up that 7 percent to more i cannot tell you how much more no no no i am being realistic here we have to be realistic if the economy produces much more and the price of sugar gets up high you ll expect us challenging the other two other countries in the percentage rather than being half jamaica and just onethird of trinidad he said speaking in his personal capacity registrar of the university of guyana dr nigel gravesande highlighted that guyana s budgetary allocation for direct youth empowerment is 7 percent compared to 15 percent in trinidad and tobago and 23 percent in jamaica that is the statistical reality and the most recent uneclac united nations economic commission for latin america and the caribbean report that i have seen spoke to a direct correlation in youth violence and economic empowerment he said at the forum gravesande questioned the public security minister about whether there were shortterm mediumterm and immediate plans to structure the economy to focus on sustainable youth empowerment through increased monies in annual national budgets he reiterated government s position at a time when authorities are grappling to manage the fallout from last sunday s fire that destroyed the georgetown prison on camp street the opposition people s progressive party civic pppc has already criticised ramjattan for using the state of the sugar industry as a scapegoat the public security minister acknowledged that more money needs to spent on empowerment education and employment opportunities for youths with a number of guyana s sugar exports not doing well he said government has had to decide on its priority areas for spending scarce cash if we have to take our monies and do what is priority by our cabinet it does not necessarily mean that importance is not attached to others he said ramjattan suggested that with more revenues going into the national treasury from oil guyana would be able to spend more on a number of areas until such time that we have a better day with an oilstream revenue we ll have to start making some serious decisions and we have started that already he said the public security minister said it is time to implement the numerous recommendations contained in several reports on crime and violence among youths in guyana and the caribbean we in the caribbean we in guyana do a lot of reports somehow that has to stop we have to start utilizing the recommendations in those reports to immediately walk the talk as it were because we sometimes don t do that and we do that to the detriment of all of us he said painting a picture of the reality confronting authorities he said youths are affected by unemployment poverty alcohol and drug consumption youths smoking marijuana as early as 11 years old concerns were also raised about virtual illiteracy to the extent that only one in every five youths detained can read and there are also declining performances at high school and university among males we have a number of things in these reports from which we have to move on he said ramjattan said authorities also have to address poor parenting reduce risk factors and ensure that sport facilities ate made readily available to youths the state of youths has been thrown in the spotlight following an attempted bank robbery allegedly involving two qualified professionals and a number of members of the guyana police force article adapted from  http demerarawavescom 20170713 guyanahopestoinvestmorecashinyouthempowermentfroms  turkeyen tain talks crime youth 