- Norman GrindleyThe under-utilised Riverton Meadows Skills/Training and Education Centre.
OPERATORS OF the Riverton Meadows Skills/Training and Education Centre in St. Andrew are being forced to go door-to-door to beg prospective students to come for training at the centre.
"We cannot get participants to train," said Donald Foster, national programmes director for HEART, who is involved in a joint effort to operate the centre. "It's like pulling teeth. We started with 40 names, when we were ready it dwindled down to 10."
More than $10 million have been spent by the Rotary Club of Kingston, HEART and the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF) in establishing the Riverton Meadows Skills/Training and Education Project. Completed in 1998, the project was designed to provide training in carpentry, plumbing, masonry, electrical installation and painting for the young people in the community.
But the youths there said they were frustrated by what they claimed to be disorganisation and a number of hitches which not only delayed the programme, but caused several interruptions that lengthened their time of training.
Maxine Martin, who completed in eight months a carpentry course that was supposed to take six months, explained that participants "got frustrated because it start and stop too often, plus they promised us tools at the end of the project and we don't get them."
Ms. Martin, along with 10 other students, sat examinations in April, but are yet to get their results. She and another young lady in the programme, Lileith Richards, are competent carpenters who made the beds they now sleep on.
The organisers agreed that there were hitches in the earlier part of the programme, especially in getting equipment, but insisted that the main problem is the disinterest on the part of the community.
"The machines are here, and the trainers are ready to go, but they will not teach if they don't have at least 75 per cent occupancy," said Junior Rowe, social worker and treasurer for the centre. "We can facilitate 45 students in the entire project but our recruitment has only produced 30 names."
But the residents also highlighted the absence of electricity, which they claimed made the machines inoperable and training non-existent. That excuse did not get Mr. Rowe's backing either.
"Light posts were set up just for the project site, but the number of illegal attachments burnt it out, so now there is no light. But the young people have been disinterested from before that incident, so much so that youth from other areas used to come here for training," he explained.
Before the project was established, HEART did a survey to assess the needs of the community and those skill areas were identified as essential in light of the housing development going on in the area. The youths also claim the disinterest on their part is due to irrelevance of the skill areas and the difficulty in finding a job.
"They need to teach us more up-to-date things that can get us a job more quickly like computer, cashiering and home economics," said Ms. Martin.
Many of the young people with whom The Sunday Gleaner spoke last week, conceded that the skills centre was a "good thing," but said they had not attended because they either were just not interested or wanted other types of work. Meanwhile, the organisers are looking elsewhere for support.
"We have been advertising through the churches and schools for youths from other areas to come so we can get started in September," Mr. Rowe said.
