Friday’s youth pledge includes 1 ULP says it implemented  

Opposition Leader Godwin Friday has unveiled a five-point pledge to the nation’s youth, asking them to put his New Democratic Party into government and hold them to account.

The pledge was made at the party’s DJ Sound Clash event in Campden Park on Saturday and includes lowering the interest rates on student loans “to four and four and a half per cent”

The NDP first announced in 2020 that if elected to office, it would lower the interest rate to 4.5% but the Unity Labour Party dismissed it as opportunistic and “unsustainable”.

In the 2024 Budget, Minister of Finance Camillo Gonsalves announced that the interest rate would be lowered from 6 to 4.5%.

On Saturday, Friday said an NDP government will cut the interest rates on student loans “to four and four and a half per cent so that young people have a chance to go to school without mortgaging their family home and spending the rest of their life paying off their student loans”.

He noted that he had announced recently four things that an NDP administration would do within 60 days in government.

That pledge said that within the first two months, an NDP government would increase Public Assistance to EC$500 a month, reduce the 16% VAT on everyday goods and residential electricity, pay a bonus salary to public servants and reinstate public sector workers fired under the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

“It send the whole place wild,” Friday said.

“And then I started thinking about the young people, and I say, I have to make these promises to you, the pledge to you, a contract with you, to tell you support the New Democratic Party, and we will deliver these things for you.”

The opposition leader said the NDP will implement the pledge it made to the nation’s youth in October 2023. 

“We called it the Youth Guarantee Pledge, where we will create jobs, and if you’re not in a job, you will have a chance to be in a training programme, and if not that, then you will be in an internship programme to help you to find work so you’re not on your own,” Friday said.

The second pledge to the nation’s youth is the implementation of the National Athlete Programme that the party launched in March 2024.

“… promising young athletes and performing athletes and elite athletes will get support from the government in order to train,” Friday said, adding that the sport in which the athlete is involved does not matter.

“… it could be football, cricket, netball, swimming, sailing, athletics. The government has a role to play in making sure that you reach your goals,” he said.

Friday also pledged that an NDP government would establish a national development bank and a national innovation hub “to help young people and everybody to be able to finance their dream jobs and their businesses.

“So, you’ll be able to go to the bank and get loans at 4, four and a half per cent interest, so that you could start a business. That is real progress for young people,” he said.

The opposition leader said the next pledge is linked to the previous one, adding that an NDP government will implement “the e-commerce payment gateways that I know that you people, young people, who have jobs and businesses and projects where you do online but you can’t get paid, you can’t monetise it.

“Well, we are going to make those e-commerce payment gateways more available, like PayPal and other services, so that you can monetise your content online.”

He said this will help young people to make a living out of the creative things that they do.

“So, we have a plan for the young people in this country. We have a plan for the future of the country,” Friday said. 

“So, when we jump up tonight and we enjoy we self, it’s because we know a brighter day is coming for St Vincent and the Grenadines. So leh we do it. Read the card, hold us to this pledge. This is what we have in store for the young people of St Vincent and the Grenadines, and we can make it happen together,” he said.

“This is your night,” Friday told the event, which featured regional acts Kerwin Dubois, of Trinidad and Tobago, and The Jab King, from Grenada.

“Everywhere I go, young people telling me they want a better future in this country. They say, ‘Friday, how we going to get jobs in this country? And I say to you, that’s what I look for every single day, and the New Democratic Party is the only party that has the plan to bring that.”

The opposition leader said he knows that the young people love St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

“This is your future. The election coming, this is your election,” said Friday, who will make his second bid to lead the NDP to victory after his first attempt in 2017.

General elections are constitutionally due by February 2026 but are widely expected by November.

The Unity Labour Party launched its national campaign in Layou, also on Saturday, as it seeks a sixth consecutive five-year term in office.

Friday urged the young people to register and be ready to vote “because the things we have in store for the young people of this country will make life better for you…”