Billions of dollars are being spent on the resuscitated Community Service Officers (CSOs) programme, an investment the Minister of Amerindian Affairs Pauline Sukhai defended during her contribution to the 2025 National Budget debate.
The CSO programme engages Indigenous youth, encouraging them to support their communities through various tasks and training opportunities. The youth engaged get a stipend while in the programme.
In the 2025 budget, some $1.5 billion was set aside to support about 2,700 CSOs in Indigenous communities. This sum adds to the $4.2 billion already channeled into the programme over the past four years.
And for Sukhai, the programme is one that gainfully engages Indigenous youth, giving them a stake in the development of their communities while exposing them to training and leadership opportunities.
“The majority of the CSOs that support village development and community development did not stay in that level,” she boasted, noting that some of the CSOs have gone to to become Toshaos (Indigenous village leaders) or assume other leadership roles.
The minister, however, addressed claims made by Opposition Parliamentarian Vincent Henry that a former People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) administration axed the programme.
“It was in June of 2015 that the programme was abandoned,” she reminded the lawmakers gathered for the budget debate.
According to Sukhai, a cabinet decision was made to give the CSOs their stipend up to April. After the May elections, she explained, it was expected that the new government would continue the programme.
“The incoming government, whether it be the PPP/C or APNU+AFC, they would have had the responsibility to take the programme forward,” she said.
But that programme was discontinued and Sukhai said it estimated that about $3.6 billion was not invested in this programme, and the pockets of Indigenous youth, while the APNU+AFC coalition office was in office from 2015 to 2020.
Cognisant of the value of the programme, Sukhai said the PPP/C vowed to resuscitate. And soon after taking office in 2020, she recalled, the programme was revived.
Sukhai noted that the government is committed to support Indigenous youth and Budget 2025 will help it execute that mandate.
