Justice Minister Delroy Chuck has bemoaned the lack of commitment and productivity among Jamaica’s youth population and has sought to enlist the support of the country’s justices of the peace (JP) to mobilising a cultural shift.

Chuck, who was speaking at the commissioning service of 93 JPs for the parish of St Catherine, bemoaned the fact that some 200,000 young people across Jamaica remain unemployed, but do not express an interest in obtaining jobs.

“When employers give them a work, and after they get the first two weeks of salary, you don’t see them again. Sometimes when they work on the farm, after the first two days and they get two days’ pay you don’t see them again until they need the money again,” Chuck underscored.

He called on JPs and their respective associations to assist in getting more young people into the workplace.

“You have far too many youngsters, the 200,000 I am speaking about. How they survive I don’t know but the police will tell you how they survive: they rob, they extort, they steal, they beg and living off others because that’s the way they survive,” he added.

Chuck also urged the newly minted JPs to be agents of change by working closely with law enforcers to help reduce gang-related activities.