Badal bats for self employment opportunities for youth

Aiming to ensure 'employment for every hand', Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal today asked the state officials to achieve this "gigantic task" by providing requisite frame work and empowering the unemployed youth with viable self-employment opportunities.
He also said that the objective can only be achieved after thoughtful deliberations followed by a series of such meetings with the leading mentors in the field of self-employment and inclusive development.
Badal was speaking in his inaugural address on the day long 'National Workshop on Promotion of Self-employment in Punjab' in association with National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), Markfed and Punjab Agro here.

He asked the Chief Secretary to prepare a time-bound action plan to offer huge opportunities to the unemployed youth for self employment clearly stipulating a self sustaining mechanism to offer back up support to impart them skill training, tie up for finances from the banks and other financial institutions by the government functionaries besides focusing on critical factors such as guidance, planning and survey to identify the needs of the local market/industry.
The Chief Minister said, "our rural youth was very receptive to emerging technologies, innovations and new ideas and was confident that they would certainly put their soul and mind in transforming their aspirations into reality provided they were properly guided by the experts in the field of self employment, skill development and entrepreneurship".

Talking further about the skill development programme in health sector, the Chief Minister said that the state government had already initiated several certificate/ diploma/ degree/skill courses in health sectors and para medics in the government medical colleges of Patiala, Amritsar and Faridkot keeping in view its huge demand in the healthcare sector.
He said that his government had recently inked a MoU with the Healthcare Sector Skill Council - an arm of National Skill Development Council at New Delhi to further enhance the scope of skill development opportunities in this emerging core sector.
Meanwhile, experts from fields such as agriculture, dairy research, fisheries, poultry, handicraft and home based industries including National Dairy Research Institution Karnal, Scientist Central Institute of Fisheries Technology Cochin shared their views on financing of self employment ventures, bottlenecks in setting up small units and their resolution, skill gaps and how to overcome them, technical knowhow and mutual cooperation.