Youths to target citizens to raise Rs 25m

Kathmandu May 10:

A group of youths has come up with a novel idea of addressing the thorny issue of unemployment by collecting one rupee from all citizens to put into the Employment Promotion Fund it created recently.

“It is difficult to reach out to all citizens, but we will try to reach out to as many as possible to have at least Rs 25 million in the fund,” said Shushil Prasad Dhungana, chairman of ‘Collaboration against Unemployment’, the group that has created the fund. Dhungana said his organisation would try to provide the adult population with needed help to find jobs within the country.

“Our youths should not be exchanged for remittances, they can earn enough in the country itself provided they have the skills and creativity and we will try to fulfil that need,” Dhungana added.

He informed that the money for the fund would also be raised through different charity programmes. Collaboration against Unemployment has collected Rs 41,000 from 2,424 people since it began its mission two weeks ago.

All Nepal National Free Students’ Union president Thakur Gaire said the youths needed both monetary support and vocational skills to create jobs for themselves. He urged the group to truly devote itself to promote employment and not to serve as a vehicle for the insiders to manipulate the organisation, as has been the case with some other NGOs.

Every year, six to seven lakh Nepali youths need jobs. A vast majority of unemployed youth go to India and other Asian countries, mostly the gulf countries, to work, as the domestic job market has not enough jobs for them.