Click to view full size

The fate of sev­er­al ma­jor youth in­ter­ven­tion pro­grammes—in­clud­ing the Civil­ian Con­ser­va­tion Corps (CCC), the Mil­i­tary-Led Aca­d­e­m­ic Train­ing (Mi­LAT) Pro­gramme, and the Mil­i­tary-Led Youth Pro­gramme of Ap­pren­tice­ship and Re­ori­en­ta­tion Train­ing (MY­PART)—re­mains un­cer­tain, with Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs Phillip Watts in­di­cat­ing a fi­nal de­ci­sion has yet to be made.

“I will be mak­ing a state­ment af­ter the Cab­i­net meet­ing on that,” Watts said in re­sponse to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia. “I’m still try­ing to delve in­to that to find out ex­act­ly what is hap­pen­ing with that pro­gramme.”

His com­ments come in the wake of trou­bling rev­e­la­tions from a se­nior of­fi­cial con­nect­ed to Mi­LAT and MY­PART, who dis­closed that the pro­grammes have ef­fec­tive­ly stalled due to se­ri­ous lo­gis­ti­cal and ad­min­is­tra­tive short­com­ings. These in­clude crit­i­cal short­ages in ba­sic sup­plies, re­peat­ed de­lays in pro­gramme launch­es, bu­reau­crat­ic red tape, and the lack of suit­able fa­cil­i­ties.