Around 20 per cent of the country’s youth will be engaged in Prime Minister Imran Khan’s 10 billion tree drive ‘Plant4Pakistan’ and each young person will be provided a free-of-cost nursery with 250,000 saplings for business, said Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Youth Affairs Usman Dar at a press conference here on Wednesday. Dar said as per initial assessment, each young man will be able to earn Rs 25,000 to Rs 30,000 per month through this initiative. He said the plantation drive will yield double impact by making country green as well as providing a source for revenue generation through the sale of wood. “Engagement of the youth will also bring double benefit by their social engagement as well as filling unemployment gap in the country,” he added. While further explaining, Dar reaffirmed that this plan is part of the project National Youth Development Program (NYDP), adding that the project would also be given legal and institutional status through parliamentary approval before its formal launching. “So for, laws for other segments of the society would formulate including women, children and minorities, but no proper policy was formulated in order to facilitate our youth”, he regretted adding that its first time we planned to establish some permanent institutional framework for the youth. He further claimed that NYDP is not only a project to fill the official files but it’s a comprehensive mechanism which is prepared after long debate and in mutual consultation of many organizations. Dar said that the NYDP is contains many other sub-programs for youth for instance, he added, ‘Start Up Pakistan’ was one among them. The fundamental purpose of the Start Up Pakistan, he said, was to engage maximum youth to bring out of schools children in to schools. PM’s aide says each young person will be earning Rs 25,000 to Rs 30,000 per month through the plantation drive The PM Assistant said that in the first time we decided create impacts of each PC-I in PSDP, adding that it would be allocated proper share for youth in the PSDP. While regretting a severe shortage of skilled lot, Dar said that when his government collected statistics it found 3700 skill development institutions functioning in the country. However, their progress was totally zero. “The Rs 700 billion projects launched by previous government for youth even could not yield 700 jobs”, he shocked adding that he has documentary statistics for this malpractice with him but has not intention to challenge them at any forum because his party believes only to moving forward for national development instead engaging themselves in such exercises which create impression for political revenge. While briefing another sub-project which is part of NYDP, PM Assistant said that giving interest free loans till Rs 1 lac to each jobless youth also planned to make part of this project. The 65 percent population is comprised on youth segment but unfortunately they never have been put in priority list, he surprised and assured that to prosperous this segment was among our best efforts as he said the entire world made best policies for their youth. While reply a query that why the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government abolished Prime Minister Laptop scheme which was launched by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, the PM Assistant said that after study we reached on the point that that scheme was no more than a political bribe to capture the youth “only to get votes”. “Today I am not with intension to criticize the previous government, but want to make it clear that Rs 26 billion corruptions was allegedly done in various projects launched by previous government and the laptops scheme was one of them”, he alleged. Published in Daily Times, February 14th 2019.