March 31: In a detailed, interactive and engaging session, Usman Dar, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Youth Affairs, briefed the members of the 17th Youth Parliament Pakistan about Government’s 114 Billion Rupees Kamyab Jawan initiative. He spoke at length about the background of the creation of ‘Kamyaab Jawan Programme’ which facilitates the youth of Pakistan in securing exclusive soft loans to help them launch their own businesses. He highlighted that Rs. 40 Billion have already been disbursed to youth in the past two years compared to Rs. 23 Billion during the previous government’s five years. He also informed the YPP that 25,000 businesses have been established and more than 60, 000 jobs created for the youth using the youth entrepreneurship scheme under Kamyaab Jawan Programme. Governments intends to continue to provide financial support to the youth in the coming years, he added and hoped that Pakistan will have productive youth contributing even more effectively to the economy of Pakistan in the next few years. He emphasized that the SAPM’s office ensures transparency and accountability in all of their endeavors and revealed his ambition to scale up the youth loans and support in hi-tech sectors in the coming years. The main issue with government related programmes in Pakistan, Usman Dar highlighted, was lack of consistency and sustainability of such programmes which makes it difficult for nation-building programmes to survive and be considered feasible in the future.
SAPM Usman Dar stressed on the need for creating national and international opportunities for young sportsmen and sportswomen and in this regard mentioned the launch of a Green Youth Movement scheme under which youth will be further facilitated to participate in healthy activities. He also thought that the Green Youth Movement with its office bearers in each educational institution may become a healthier substitute for Students’ Unions. Usman Dar also expressed his keen interest in understanding the functions of PILDAT’s youth parliament and commended the YPP Secretariat and PILDAT in organizing such a broad-based youth forum covering not only all federating units of the country but also Azad Kashmir, Gilgit-Baltistan and Overseas Pakistanis roughly replicating the real National Assembly of Pakistan. The talk of Mr. Dar was followed by an engaging question and answer session with the MYPs asking questions regarding youth related issues such as the lack of employability skills, brain drain and how local civil society organisations could collaborate with the Kamyaab Jawan Programme.
Earlier, Members of the 17th Youth Parliament Pakistan met on its third sitting of the second virtual session to receive briefing the science and practice of designing and executing public opinion polls in the realm of business, social sector, economic fields and politics by Tariq Junaid, Executive Director, Institute of Public Opinion and Research (IPOR). Members were given a step-by-step tutorial on how to conduct public opinion surveys and MYPs were enlightened on sampling techniques and common interviewer mistakes. MYPs were informed about the importance of rapport building, problem-solving, data security & confidentiality. In phase III, the post data collection period, MYPs learned about quality control of surveys & backchecking. Afterwards, an engaging question & answer session was conducted with the MYPs who were keen to understand that how a small sample of respondents could be made representative of the entire population of a country, how artificial intelligence can replace public opinion polls due to its behavioral patterning techniques & how women participation can be raised and made more inclusive in the public opinion surveys.
The Youth Parliament of Pakistan is a project of PILDAT and has been running for the past 17 years. The 17th YPP is supported by the Jang/Geo Group, Bank of Punjab, Interloop Limited, Islamabad Serena Hotel, FES Pakistan, University of Lahore and Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi.
