Civics to be made required study- Jagdeo

Last Updated on Thursday, 8 May 2025, 21:13 by Writer

Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo on Thursday announced that Civics – rights and obligations of Guyanese – would be made a compulsory school subject, even as he admitted that more must be done to tackle poverty among disadvantaged youths.

“In the next government, we have to go back and the compulsory subject in school must be Civics or citizen education,” he told a news conference at Freedom House, the headquarters of the governing People’s Progressive Party (PPP).

He hoped that such an approach would “incubate better citizens” in the school system.

In the wake of recent looting, burning, and clashes with police amid concerns about the cause of 11-year-old Adriana Younge’s death, several concerns have been raised about the socio-economic conditions of youths.

Chairman of the political party, Vigilent for a New Guyana, Dorwain Bess had, on May 3, called for better systems to be put in place to improve the conditions of youths.

The Vice President said Christian, Hindu, and Muslim religious leaders would be asked to contribute “common things” under the umbrella of moral education which would be combined with citizen education, democracy, rights, responsibilities, and integrity of Guyana’s borders.

He hoped that Civics would help to reform the mindset of a certain category of persons.

“Some people in this group, they are misguided and others are purely criminal in intent and you have to come down heavily on them with the law enforcement but the misguided ones we have to keep working with,” he said.

Mr Jagdeo said there were Afro- and Indo-Guyanese youths across several communities who did not want to work, although jobs and study opportunities through the Guyana Online Academy of Learning (GOAL) or technical and vocational training were available.

“They can find work. They can get a government opportunity to pay for training but it’s APNU (A Partnership for National Unity) that doesn’t want them to be trained because this is an army of people that they can mobilise and do their bidding and then dissociate themselves again,” he said.

He promised that efforts would be made to reverse the plight of some youths but government would not tolerate violence by people who were being mobilised politically.

“Clearly, we have to do much more work to reach poor people,” the Vice President said.

Mr Jagdeo, who is also the PPP General Secretary, denied opposition accusations that his political organisation stoked the unrest to blame the opposition which he in turn did.

“These individuals, they are not PPP plants. If they break the law, I don’t care if they claim that they’re PPP or not but I know that many of them were mobilised by the opposition who then distanced themselves from them when they got into trouble. Whether they’re PPP or not, I support strong enforcement action against anyone who broke the law,” he said.