By Dionne Rose, Staff ReporterSOME 4,500 young persons islandwide are this year enrolled in the National Summer Employment Programme, following the last-minute provision of a $35 million budget by Government, Rev. Adinhair Jones, executive director of the National Youth Service (NYS), informed The Gleaner yesterday.
He said that the annual programme is being run in two phases with one set of young persons being employed for three weeks in July and the second set for another three weeks in August.
The young people will be placed in private sector organisations, Ministries and Government agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Rev. Jones said that there would be a public launch of the programme on August 12 at Emancipation Park, New Kingston.
Since the programme was established in 2001, under the directive of Prime Minister P.J. Patterson, some 15,000 young persons have benefited from the programme with the Government expending $135 million up to 2003.
Rev. Jones also disclosed that the NYS currently has 175 persons in training at its Courts Jamaica-sponsored camp where young persons ages 20 to 24 years are being trained in sales promotion and cashiering.
After the training, Rev. Jones said that the participants would be placed in Courts' 27 stores islandwide as sales representatives and customer care agents for a six-month period.
Rev. Jones said that the private sector partnership initiative was the second camp to be implemented by the NYS since the start of the year. The first was held in May, where the NYS successfully trained its first batch of customer care participants who are currently undergoing on-the-job training in private sector entities such as Digicel, Cable and Wireless Jamaica and the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel.
Commenting on how many young persons are retained by these companies after on-the-job training, Rev. Jones said that the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) study that was done in 2002 showed that 34 per cent of these persons were offered full employment with these companies, while another 20 per cent went on to tertiary studies. He explained that one of the problems with the remaining participants were that their "matriculation level was very low" and as a result they did not do so well.
To address this deficiency the Executive Director said that the NYS has been encouraging these participants to return to school and resit the subjects that they have failed.
