(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) Chairman of the Council for Human and Social Development (COHSOD) the Hon Patrick Simmons has impressed upon his colleague Ministers at a Special Meeting of the COHSOD, the need to take stock and “do business differently; to get things done the right way and at the right time.”

The Grenada Minister of Youth Empowerment, Culture and Sport delivered a thought-provoking main address at the start of the COHSOD Meeting in which he implored his colleague ministers to take a serious look at themselves as well as the role and functions of the COHSOD in national and regional development.

The COHSOD is meeting in Paramaribo, Suriname to discuss the Report of the CARICOM Commission on Youth Development and to consider the policy implications of the Report, in order to advise Heads of Government on appropriate actions based on the findings of the Report. Heads of Government meet at a Special Summit on Youth Development on Friday 29 and Saturday 30 January also in Paramaribo.

According to the Minister Simmons, the COHSOD was established to provide dynamic leadership for national development and should be more proactive in ensuring that effective policies in human and social development are formulated and implemented. However, he noted that the COHSOD did not have a success rate in policy implementation and in instances where policies were implemented, the COHSOD had failed to monitor their impact.

“The previous policies and mandates coming out of this COHSOD for the most part have either not been implemented at the national level or have not been monitored to ensure their workability and effectiveness, hence their impacts have been less than minimal,” the Minister said.

Minister Simmons stressed the need for his colleague ministers to use the COHSOD wisely to shape policies and to enhance and monitor implementation of policies, especially those related to youth development.

To do so he said, the COHSOD needed to forge effective partnerships and collaboration. Millions of dollars, he said, were spent on youth interventions, but little returns were gained because of the failure to involve youth in their own programmes. “Perhaps, and arguably so, the problem lies in the haphazard way in which we tackle the youth agenda, and even more crucial perhaps, we have been talking about youth, formulating policies for youth to improve the situation of youth without hearing from and involving the youth themselves without engaging and involving them in the development of solutions to their own problems,” the Chair of COHSOD concluded.

CONTACT: piu@caricom.org