Youth Self-Employment Programme
To Reduce Unemployment

By Uttam Maharjan

UNEMPLOYMENT is a nagging problem not only in Nepal but also elsewhere in the world. Even developed countries have not been able to get rid of it. Only the scales of the problems would vary. In developed countries, unemployment is on a low scale, while in developing countries it is on a large scale.

In Nepal, infrastructure development required for economic growth is not up to the mark. Investments made in productive sectors are not adequate. Further, results commensurate with investments hardly come out due to the poor implementation of the development projects.

Poverty and unemployment are interlinked phenomena. A low rate of employment is responsible for the high incidence of poverty in the country. The rate of employment in the country is estimated at 4.9 per cent, with semi-employment occupying as high as 47 per cent. Taking into account the population growth rate of 3.7 per cent, about 300,000 labourers are expected to enter the labour market every year.

As the investments in productive sectors are low, population growth is high and the private sector is not flourishing satisfactory, the problem of unemployment has further been compounded. Besides, the involvement of foreign labourers in the domestic labour market has deprived some Nepalese of jobs.

For employment generation, such sectors as hydropower, tourism and forestry ought to be developed. Similarly, investments in unproductive sectors should be diverted to more productive ones.

Skilled manpower is required for development activities but the production of such manpower has not kept up with the demand. Therefore, a shortage of skilled manpower has been acutely felt.

At the end of the Eighth Plan, labour forces were estimated at 11.67 million, out of which 81 per cent were engaged in agriculture; 5 per cent in industry, mining, electricity and construction; and 14 per cent in business, hotel, transport, commerce, finance, realty and social sectors.

Agriculture provides more employment opportunities than any other sector. But it cannot provide year round employment due to the seasonal factor. So those engaged in agriculture sector have to remain idle in the off season. Therefore, there is a need for making arrangements for promoting non-agricultural business like wickerwork, sericulture and apiculture.

Some youths have a tendency to go abroad to work there. Due to low-level skills, they often end up working as menial workers with very few facilities. What is more, they have to undergo physical torture even for venial faults or through no fault of theirs. There are cases galore where foreign job-seekers are defrauded by manpower supply agents or other brokers, marooning them in a foreign land.

It is obvious that people are willing to work abroad in the hope of earning more money. The other reason is that they are shy of working in their own country as the low-level workers. Lack of adequate job opportunities is also partially responsible for encouraging the quest for foreign employment.

Youths are considered a powerhouse for the development of a country in that they are endowed with activity, vigour and zeal that can be productively used in development activities. But for lack of opportunities, the energy of the youths often goes down the drain, which is a misfortune for a country.

For proper mobilisation of the youths in the country, the government has implemented the Youth Self-Employment Programme since the fiscal year 2056/2057. The goal of the programme are to identify and reach target groups: to employ youth skills in productive sectors: to utilise skills, education, capital and entrepreneurship in the rural areas: to make the youths self-dependent; and so on.

The practical aspect of the programme is to establish training centres for the unemployed youths and ground them in vocational training. Such training includes tailoring, mechanical work, metal fabrication, wickerwork, food-making and so on.

After completion of the training, the trained youths are provided with a collateral-free loan of Rs. 100,000 so that they can do work on their own. The positive side of the programme is that if they successfully run and gradually expand their business, they can employ more unemployed youths, also, thus mitigating the problem of unemployment to some extent.

The Ninth Plan has set a far-sighted goal of reducing unemployment to 3 per cent and semi-unemployment to 10 per cent in 20 years. For this, it has also developed the ‘one family one job’ concept.

Similarly, the current budget has put special emphasis on mitigating the unemployment problem by conducting employment and self-employment programmes. The goals set by the budget include restructuring and going ahead with the Youth Self-Employment Programme; conforming skill development programmes to the market demand; collecting and publishing information about employment exchange and the labour market; studying the labour markets at home and abroad, devising labour and skill development programmes; and so on.

However, the success of the programme depends largely on the joint efforts of the government, NGOs and private sector. The youths should also forgo the mentality against doing traditional work. Such a cheap mentality harboured by the youths might be partially responsible for the mounting problem of unemployment. As we can see, it is not easy to get a jot in the government or private sector. And it goes without saying that virtually every youths hankers after such a white-collar job.

During the Panchayat era too, some anti-unemployment campaigns were set in motion. The Educated Unemployed Special Loan Programme formulated with the objective of granting concessional loans to the educated unemployed youths continued for some years, only to come to a halt because no positive results could come out.

Likewise, the Cottage and Small-Scale Industry Programme was jointly run by the government. World Bank and UNDP. The aims of the programme were to optimally use local resources for development, substitute imports, promote exports and increase rural income. However, this programme could not be sustained and so was dropped in mid-stream.

So cautious steps should be taken not to allow the Youth-Self Employment Programme to fizzle out. And the government, NGOs, private sector and target groups themselves should join forces for the perpetuation of the programme.

Right To Speak Vs. Right To Unheed!

By Prakash Dahal

THEY say, when the citizens of a Greek city-state pounded the street demanding rights to speak, the tyrant decided to build a big glass house where they could be herded into to make noise. But, on no condition they could speak anything coming out of the hall or before going in.

Doing so would be illegal and a breach of contract. The contract was if their words leaked out of the hall, their rights would be revoked. The dictator gave them restricted rights to express themselves. All they could do was they could sit on the floor and emit anything that frayed their temper or got on their nerves to keep oneself cool. There were seats on the dais but they remained unseated.

They say, the tyrant was hard-nosed against granting them that right. However, his councilors out-witted him and forced him to give in to the demands.

The very next day of the tyrant’s official declaration permitting the rights, the councilors clubbed together outside his office and began chanting slogans raising clenched fist in the air.

The flabbergasted ruler couldn’t make out what it was all about. It was in the negotiation table the councilors voiced their demand. The demand was for "rights not to listen".

They contended that the citizen now had right to speak and that they must have right not to listen. They urged the president to act democratically, impartially and non-discriminatingly in granting rights to its people.

The president granted them the rights. Now, either of them had what they wanted. The citizens now could compete in shouting down the other in the hall with no one in the dais to lend them ears. The citizen fought for the rights to speak and not to the rights to be listened to. The councilors, on the other hand, asked for rights not to listen to.

The citizens could get into the hall and had all the rights to turn the assembly hall into a pandemonium by hurling curses and making allegations and counter allegations at each other. No marshals were required as no common decency was to be maintained. Anyone could blare out any thing. They could use anything to express themselves; words, body-languages, punches, blows, ripping, hitting, kicking, yelling, head-on or head-off.

In fact, the councilors’ "right not to listen" made them rowdy and rogue. The emission of anger and frustration didn’t cool their nerves rather it frayed their temper further. Their kicking and hitting didn’t last for long as they broke the fragile glass walls and their shrill falling out in the street. The frenzy behaviour of the citizens reached the tyrant’s ears. The president revoked their rights to speak. And, everyone was happy. Those who wanted to speak were tired of speaking. Those who didn’t want to listen didn’t need that right any more. And the president was happy because he could now set the wheels on his own track.

These days, writing habits in the country seem withering away. Few powerful columnists have stopped spilling inks on papers. Upon asked, they say, the constitution has de-muzzled them but those who should have kept their ears open have been turning deaf ears to what they say. There are readers but no realizers. They are right, perhaps.

But, didn’t they struggle only for the rights to express themselves? And, that is what they have been awarded through the world’s youngest democratic constitution. A decade back, when they fought for freedom and democracy, they wanted the rights to express themselves freely. They certainly didn’t ask for rights to be read. And therefore, if they don’t read, they can’t blame anyone.

Unlike the writers and opinion makers, those who wanted to express themselves through articulatory means seem still happy with the rights they have had through the constitution. They don’t bother whether or not one listens to them or what reactions they make if and when they listen to them. All they want is to talk. They talk of exporting hydropower through satellites to Western Europe. They talk of churning out white gold from Nepalese rivers. They talk of righting all the wrongs at one stroke.

They don’t care what one think about them. Over the years they fought for the rights to speak. And, because they have had it now, they must make an optimum utilization of the rights to strengthen and to make democracy vibrant. They think if they stop making noise, democracy will suffocate.

In fact, they are the honest exercisers. Unlike those pen runners, these people are not complaining that they are not being heeded. They know that they didn’t ask for the rights to be listened to. Hence, neither they themselves are prepared to listen to anyone nor they expect anyone to listen to them. They only want to speak and under no circumstances are ready to give up that right.

Unlike the writers, they don’t bother whether or not one listens to them. And, unlike the Greek city-state citizens, they are not condition-bound.

Lonely Hearts

BY NU

"I FEEL lonely even in the crowd," a famous English crooner thus crooned his inner feeling. Maybe to give words to the feelings that might have arisen after not finding the closeness of his lady-love at a time when he felt her most.

The emotional pangs the singer felt is aptly fitted to other also because if they do not satiate their desire to be in closeness with the people they love most, they can be turned into a heap of depression, despair and despondency.

At most occasions, heart-breaks have its resources in being felt alone. And likewise if those who sense that they are being overlooked by someone whom they loved from their heart of hearts, their mental agony may just pile up and sometimes become too much to be tolerated.

Frustration mixed with despairs which are the result of emotional agony may prove fatal and may cause heart-breaks, mental and physical ailments and sometimes even forces people to commit suicides.

Apart from mental agony that may be the result of being felt lonely, there is another dimension of the after effects of such mental agony that may prove fatal for the human beings. A report published few years back in the USA said that persons who are without friends or family or who prefer to live alone can be victims of heart attacks.

The reports stated that the frustration that emanates from being alone slowly but surely doubles and redoubles the mental agony which put further pressure on the soft cockels of hearts. This is true in the American and Japanese societies where people, due to their workaholic nature, find no time to spend with family and friends. People in these societies are prone to suffer heart ailments more often that the society where people live in closeness with others.

In a nutshell, the heart of the above mentioned report is: if the mind and heart, the core parts of human body, suffer the slings and arrows of frustration and despair, they are bound to break or suffer. No doubt then, the medical practitioners advice against putting mental pressures on hearts patients must be taken in right perspective. Lonely hearts are inclined to suffer the crumble more than the hearts that have the luxury of revealing in the company of other hearts.

Human beings are gregarious animals. They want to live in the close harmony with other men. Societies after societies and then human civilizations after civilizations have been founded on the human beings’ love to live in company with fellow beings while performing many duties as homo-sapiens.

But as the human progress took place, men started finding themselves in the maze of difficulties of modern way of life as modernity has taken over. And it has brought many an impediments in men’s day to day life.

God created the World and men built the cities. And, under the glare of bright city life, men are blinded with scourges that keep coming as a result of modern way of life. Wealth, women, wine, richness and prosperity and high flying life are what men pine and opine for. But more often, despondency, despair and depression become daily doses as the failure of not achieving them tells its sorry tale on men’s mind and hearts.

The broader solutions in order to stop hearts from being broken are the exchanging of hearts and sharing of minds. It can serve well to the well being of hearts. And our well being is where our heart is.

In short, so far as human beings are concerned, the heart of all worldly matters is matters pertaining to hearts must be given thorough thought.