From left to right, Acting Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports, Mark Cummins, BDF Chaplin Reverend Major Mylon Springer, BYS Director, Hally Haynes and Director of Youth Affairs, Cleviston Hunte, right, watch as Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports, Stephen Lashley breaks ground on the new headquarters for the Barbados Youth Service at Paragon, Christ Church.
Lashley: Not so fast
Given the recent cases of violence in schools, there have been some discussions and murmurings for Government to establish a compulsory national youth service to help those wayward youth, however, a government Minister believes that we should look to enforcing existing mechanisms before looking at a compulsory national youth service.
This comment was made by the Minister of Culture, Sport and Youth, Stephen Lashley, as he delivered the feature address during the ground breaking ceremony for the future home of the Barbados Youth Service, which took place at Paragon yesterday morning.
“I know in recent times there has been some clamour and discussion and calls for the establishment of a permanent national youth service, a compulsory youth service in Barbados,” he said.
“And when I heard that discussion, I marvelled, because when we took the discussion to parliament about a national youth policy of Barbados, this policy contained a provision for the establishment of a compulsory national youth service. And of course, the reason we did not follow through with that was because all across Barbados, there was significant resistance to the establishment of a compulsory national youth service,” it was pointed out.
He noted that there was strong opposition to the establishment of such in the past because persons were complaining that they were about to “infringe the constitutional rights of our young people”.
Suffice it to say, the Minister found it ironic that those same persons were now asking the Government to embark on establishing a compulsory national youth service. Lashley believes that this was indeed something to look at, however, before considering such, persons should perhaps look at enforcing some of the already existing mechanism such as cub scouts, cadets and other civic services.
“I believe that we have to explore existing mechanisms first, of course. I believe, for example, in our schools, we have to return to dedicating school time to those activities, those civic activities that are important for growth; and I think we need to return to that as our first order of business,” he said.