May 10, 2021
By Mohamed M. Sesay
As part of the many supports of the New Direction Government towards Youth in Farming, the Minister of Youth Affairs Mohamed Orman Bangura has informed Journalists that in two weeks’ time his Ministry will be distributing two hundred (200) Brand New XL Motor Bikes to all Chiefdom Youth leaders. This is part of incentive to enhance mobility support for the successful implementation of the chiefdom farms.
Disclosing this in the Ministry of Information and Communications’ presser, Minister Bangura noted that youth participation and youth in governance do not only stop at cabinet level, but rather for young people to be represented in every facet of decision making.
He disclosed that in the next couple of weeks, the ministry will be having two hundred brand new XL Motor Bikes for every youth leader across the country so that people will start seeing reason why they should not see young people as liability but rather see them as partners in development.
He added that, the Youth in Agriculture project currently dubbed as the chiefdom youth farms is the flagship programme for his Ministry and the government by extension. He recalled that the President during the state opening last years, he made mention of every chiefdom to have a youth farm. Acting upon that pronouncement made by the president, Minister Orman Bandura therefore assured that the youth farm is so far doing well wherein, He said Kambai District happens to be on top of everything in terms of commendable implementation of the chiefdom youth farms followed by Port Loko and Bombali districts respectively. He further stated that what they are doing currently towards at the Youth Council and the Chiefdom Youth Farm is that, they have created platform for young people so that they can be able to employ ten thousand people towards youth in farm sector.
“We have one hundred and ninety chiefdoms and you go to every chiefdom now with my phone I can tell you what is happening in your chiefdom. You have fifty young people per chiefdom cultivating 100 hacters of land and at the same time government will be providing seeds for them. Government will also provide agro-chemicals support and after it all the harvest will be for the young people which will serve as a startup capital for every young farmer in the country”, he said.
He continued that the reason government and the Youth Ministry are focusing on agriculture is because they believe that agriculture itself will create employment and will reduce migration among young people and also boost the local economic at chiefdom level, district level by creating jobs for young people. He also highlighted that the youth in fishery is a project launched by the president a couple of months ago for one thousand two hundred young people. He therefore informed that 98% of young people payments are in compliance of paying the loan.
Addressing the issue of delay in payment for Youth Corps for over four months now, Orman Bangura intimated that the reason for the delay of their payment was based on the fact that the Ministry of Finance embarked on a verification and confirmation exercise to ensure that the bank accounts of the eight hundred and fifty corps are indeed valid. He assured that the Ministry of Finance has concluded the verification process and that, their stipends will be paid in one or two week’s period. He tendered his apology for the delay in payment of the stipends. He however said that payment of stipend to Youth Corps is just one of the many benefit. He therefore encouraged the newly recruited corps to pay more attention aspect of the benefit which is job experience describing it as very fundamental for the service.
“The national youth service is another manifesto commitment which we started with in 2018 with three hundred and fifty youth corps , in 2019 we got five hundred youth corps and in 2020 we recruited eight hundred and fifty youth corps. The national youth service is a transparent programme which does not require who you know to join the youth corps. He said the 2021 national budget delivered by the Minister of Finance by then and now Chief Minister, made allotment for one thousand young graduates to apply but only eight hundred and fifty applied. “As a government we don’t implement development programmes with a fixed mind of thinking about the next election but we implement programme thinking of the next generation because if we have a generation that is very productive then there will come a time we will compare ourselves to other advanced countries”, he concluded.