Youth must have a stake in direction of JVD - Sendrick Chinnery
“I would like to see that especially the young people growing up have a stake in the direction of Jost Van Dyke, that they can actually be involved in whatever is going on,” Mr Chinnery said during an exclusive interview with Virgin islands News Online.
Mr Chinnery also said this was necessary to avoid the dangerous perception of being disenfranchised in one’s own land.
“As the island develops I feel that the young people should be put in a position to be able to take advantage of the opportunities as they arise rather than persons having to come in from elsewhere to take advantage of those opportunities because after a while you would feel like you are basically disenfranchised in your own land, which is not a good thing.”
The prominent businessman and co-owner of New Horizon Ferry Service, suggested that education was the key to equipping the youth to take a better grip on the future of Jost Van Dyke but that it needed to be facilitated on the island.
Mr Chinnery also recommended that computer classes be held for both young and old. “Right now everything is related to the computer age and a lot of folks may be able to read and write but these days reading and writing is not enough, you have to be in with the technology in order to be able to compete. There could be computer classes for folks who need to learn that, there could also be literacy classes for folks who need to probably get more advanced in the educational field.”
Many other residents were also of the view that there needed to be educational programmes on the island for residents, who are not able to travel to Tortola to attend development courses. They also impressed on the need for a community centre that could be used to facilitate certain programmes.
“We need a community centre so that people could go and learn something because when you working here you can’t pay passage to go Tortola. They should be able to offer us some courses here and maybe have a computer centre, or other courses to teach people certain things like how to decorate a cake and so on,” a Ms Williams told the news site.
She also said there was need for more activities for the children, both recreational and education wise.
Isaiah Chinnery called for remedial programmes for school drop outs. “A lot of people over here drop out of school and need programmes that could help them to get qualified to land a proper job. Some people can’t read self, but to go to Tortola and other place else you taking time out and spending money, the Government could help with that kind of thing. You have programmes like that all over the place. How come we don’t have any?”
A group of young men that included Meshach and Daniel George and Anthony Chinnery said there was also need for skills training to be offered to young people as well as other educational programmes that could qualify them to have trade licenses.
“We applied for trade licenses years ago and we can’t get any. They telling us that we have to get some kind of education to do so but it is difficult for us to travel to Tortola to get that and we here can’t find work, we can’t get contracts, not even a bush cutting contract or to paint guard rails,” one of the young men stated.
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