THE decision of the Government to observe 2022 as Year of Youth in Pakistan is surely in line with the declared objective of Prime Minister Imran Khan to exploit the potential of the youth for progress and development of the country.
Addressing a news conference on Tuesday, Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Youth Affairs, Usman Dar, announced a number of activities for the year aimed at promoting job opportunities, skill development, art and culture as well as sports events.
Pakistan has the largest percentage of young people as 64pc of the total population is below the age of 30 while 29pc is between the ages of 15 and 29 years, making it one of the youngest countries in the world and the second youngest in the South Asian region after Afghanistan.
It is in this context that the successive governments have been talking about ‘demographic dividends’ but none of them could make any worthwhile contribution to benefit from the young population.
Experts say demographic dividend can only be achieved with adequate investment in the education and skills of youth, harvesting the fruits of long-term human capital development.
Usman Dar has been working hard to bring about a real change in this regard and based on his recommendations, the present Government has launched a number of programmes for exploiting the potential of the youth for the progress of the country.
The biggest problem remains the employment opportunities and, therefore, it is encouraging that under Kamyab Jawan Programme of the Government, two to three billion rupees are being disbursed among the youth for entrepreneurship every month, and during the last three months, over eight billion rupees were distributed.
The success of the initiative can be gauged by the fact that five thousand new businesses were started with this amount providing job opportunities to 15,000 people.
The Government has also launched a talent hunt for twelve sports and allocations for educational stipends increased meaningfully, especially for backward regions.
We hope activities and programmes to be carried out during the year would highlight the role of the youth and the impediments in the way of fully exploiting their potential.
