MINISTER of Youth and Culture Lisa Hanna says youths who don’t have essential documents and who lack career guidance are hurting their chances of accessing job opportunities.

Hanna says scores of Jamaica’s youths don’t have basic documents like an ID, Taxpayer Registration Number (TRN) and National Insurance Scheme (NIS) card.

“One of the burning issues affecting our young people is lack of information,” Hanna said last week while offering remarks at the launch of a Youth Upliftment Through Employment (YUTE) gender-neutral special services booklet called Services for Urban Youth at the Olympic Gardens Civic Centre in Kingston.

“Our young people need to know that there are some vital documents that a young person leaving school must have if they want to get ahead in life and change the perception that ‘nutten nah gwaan’,” Hanna said.

She said these documents are not readily available when these youths are called upon for career opportunities.

She said this situation hampers the efforts of her ministry, the National Youth Service and the YUTE programme, which aim to create job opportunities and decrease the unemployment rate.

“These documents cost nothing except the effort to go to the relevant offices. A simple trip to the NIS office will put you in line for your NIS number, similarly with the TRN. Your voter registration ID only means a trip to your electoral office, providing the correct information and making yourself available for address verification. With that, you have a free ID card that is widely accepted, but if you don’t have anything, what will happen to you?” she argued.

Although youth employment has been on the tongues of many, Hanna said little progress can be made with youths who want to start their own businesses, for example, and who do not have proper documents, even after they have completed training in credited programmes.

“Without these, you cannot save, you cannot do business, and you can’t hold down a job and so you will forever be confined to the thinking that ‘nutten nah gwaan’,” the minister said.

She said Government, in particular her ministry, will continue pursuing efforts to decrease the high unemployment rate that exists among the youth of the island.

“The Government is committed to tackling the problem of youth unemployment which the International Labour Organisation estimates to be around 14.6 per cent in the Latin America and Caribbean region,” she said.

“With global youth joblessness estimated at 12.7 per cent, and youth unemployment in developed countries at 17.5 per cent, Jamaica’s estimates of a 32.2 per cent youth unemployment rate at July 2012 is unacceptably high, even when one considers that there has been a slight improvement coming from 34.9 per cent in April 2012,” Hanna said.

In addition to making an appeal for youths to acquire proper documentation and rigourously seek career counselling from bodies the Government and private sector organisations have developed, she pointed to the book, Services for Urban Youth, which contains reader-friendly information including legal advice, health issues and social welfare issues unaware youths should take into consideration before making efforts to join the labour force.