NDP will not stop programs like YES and home-care says Dr Friday

Suggestions that the New Democratic Party (NDP) will, if they take office, abandon several programs established by the Unity Labour Party (ULP) administration are “absolute nonsense”.

Two of the programs that have been mentioned are the Youth Employment Service (YES) and the home-care for the elderly program.

Leader of the Opposition and President of the New Democratic Party (NDP) Dr Godwin Friday dismissed these rumours yesterday, while also accusing government of not putting in place adequate facilities to accommodate the needs of people, especially the elderly who need the home-care program.

Friday, speaking on Monday, on the NDP-sponsored New Times program on Nice Radio said what the NDP has done, is look at ways the program can be expanded, to meet the needs of persons who need it the most.

“It is greater than the services provided now, so it is not a question of us not wanting the program or wanting to do away with the program. That is nonsense.

“Our position would be that the program needs to be expanded, it needs to be upgraded, it needs to meet the needs of the people around the country,” Friday commented on radio, in relation to the elderly care program.

He said there are persons who are benefiting, but noted that one needs to now look at ways that they program can be expanded.

“Not giving into the nonsense and the lies and the propaganda from the other side that the NDP is going to do away with the program,” Friday said.

In relation to the YES Program, he added that the NDP has been critical of that initiative, but the program is a good way for young people to get into the world of work.

“Again here, if anything, such a program, this program, will be expanded. First of all to provide a better way, because that is what it has become, for the young people who are on the program, so that at the end of the day, they will have something in their pocket, not just paying money to buy lunch and pay transportation so that they don’t have …[anything] at the end of the day with $400 they’re paying them,” the NDP president said.

He added that scope of the YES program has to be broadened by making it available to private sector entities where they are willing to pay a matching sum, so that they will have the person working and that person gaining a skill.

“Meaningful work, not doing things that are not going to develop their skills and their intellect,” Friday said while noting that programs like YES should help young people develop skills where they can compete for jobs.

He said an NDP administration will increase the salaries of persons on the YES Program and expand the program to make it available in the private sector.

“We want our young people to work here, we want them to find jobs here, but we also have something called the OECS Single Market or single economic space where there are opportunities within the region for people to expand businesses to look for employment,” the opposition leader said.

Friday said the NDP’s plans for the programs speak only of expansion and strengthening not contraction.