A WYNDHAM councillor claims he has been repeatedly ignored by colleagues when offering suggestions on how council could combat the city’s youth unemployment crisis.
Cr Gautam Gupta said he had proposed ways the council could help reduce the area’s soaring youth unemployment rate – about four times above the national average – but his ideas “weren’t even considered”.
New federal government figures reveal one in five young people between 15 and 24 in Melbourne’s outer-west is trying to find work. Cr Gupta believes the council must help prevent a generation of jobless youth emerging in Wyndham by either offering scholarships for school-aged independent youth or lobbying for governments to provide financial incentives to local businesses to hire young employees.
He said the last time he broached the topic was when councillors discussed borrowing millions of dollars for the Wyndham Leisure and Events Centre redevelopment, the council’s biggest-ever capital works program.
“One of the suggestions was that we should be putting more money into helping strengthen employment opportunities for young people, whether we do it or we pressure another level of government to do it,” he said. “Council said nothing.”
Cr Gupta said while employment was a state and federal government responsibility, “in my opinion, any issue that affects any resident of this city is a council issue”.
Phil Lewis, of the University of Canberra’s Centre for Labour Market Research, said offering subsidies to businesses would be a good way to reduce youth unemployment rates rocking Melbourne’s west. He said such subsidies were drawn from state and federal funding but were administered by local councils.
Wyndham council did not respond to Cr Gupta’s claims, but mayor Heather Marcus said it actively lobbied for government funding to keep jobless youths engaged.
She said council encouraged businesses to offer traineeships or apprenticeships. The council’s youth resources centre offers jobs mentoring and free access to phones, computers and printers to assist in job applications.
