PHILIPSBURG—Prime Minister William Marlin provided more details about his envisioned Youth Employment Fund in a statement on his official Facebook page on Friday.
Marlin had mentioned the fund and an accompanying apprentice programme in cooperation with the private sector in his New Year’s speech to the nation last week.
In its basic form, the apprentice programme entails that a business would hire an unemployed youth as a kind of apprentice for a year, with his or her salary paid for out of the Employment Fund. The youth will also be required to take courses such as computer training to improve their skills and make them better prepared for the job market, Marlin had explained.
After the year, the employer would be free to permanently hire the youth who meets their requirements and then take over paying his or her salary, he had added.
“A Youth Employment Fund provides a quick and effective solution to getting our youngsters off the street, to earn money and ultimately to fight crime,” Marlin stated on his Facebook page Friday. “The Fund has a number of perspectives.
“First off, we will start by identifying these unemployed youngsters, not by inviting them to a job fair or career day, but by literally venturing out into the various districts and recruiting them to work. After an intake process has taken place, we will have identified what skills these youngsters’ possess, what education they have completed, if any, and more importantly what their interests are,” the statement read.
Businesses will be involved as much as possible while the intake process takes place, he continued. Businesses will need to agree to employ youngsters for minimum one year and provide them with in-house training. However, this programme will completely fund these youngsters’ salaries and basic benefits, with funds generated from the Youth Employment Fund.
“The fund is the most crucial factor in the success of the programme, as businesses that are focused on cutting cost are reluctant to hire more personnel,” said Marlin. “Adding a levy of two cents to the electricity base rate and adding a levy of one cent to the price of gasoline will generate the funds needed to cover these unemployed youngsters’ minimum wage salaries. More specifically, two cents to the electricity base rate can yield approximately two million guilders and adding one cent to gasoline can yield approximately NAF. 750,000.”
Marlin further posted, “A high school dropout has no interest in full-time training or going back to school. These youngsters are interested in making money in order to support themselves or their families. These young adults who spend their days hanging on the block have no motivation or interest to visit a job fair. They are looking for a way to survive, immediately.
“These small increases are an investment in the safety and wellbeing of our people and the enhancement of our country’s economy. It is a very small price to pay to ensure that we, as a community, get youngsters off the street before they turn to crime.”
These crimes are predominantly committed by youngsters and young adults that reside on the island.
“We as a country can ask, ‘What can we do to stop this?’ We could educate the youngsters, we could train them and we can create more job opportunities. However, before all of these options can be finalised, we would have had many more robberies or casualties,” read Marlin’s statement. The suspects caught in recent robberies and murders, including the incident where a police officer was killed in the line of duty, were young adults.
The Youth Employment Fund programme also will include obligatory life-skills workshops to ensure that these at-risk youngsters are taught how to deal with peer pressure, stress and anger, as well as how to budget or be a responsible parent.
After meeting with a team of professionals of the Central Bank of Curaçao and St. Maarten on Friday, Marlin is working on the legal framework and the necessary Governmental agreements to get this project off the ground.
