Development of database to determine youth's socio-economic status in process: Usman Dar.

ISLAMABAD -- The government, in an effort to tap the untapped resource of the country available in the form of 68 per cent youth, has been working on establishing a comprehensive national database to determine socio-economic status of youth.

'The National Youth Development Index will be developed within the current calendar year (2020) which eventually will help the federal government in drafting legislation for the development of youth,' Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Youth Affairs Muhammad Usman Dar told reporter.

He said initially, a survey would be conducted at the provincial levels to analyze the challenges faced by youth including educational issues, health problems, employment status and social dilemmas.

Later, the project would be extended to the district level to evaluate the initiatives taken by the departments concerned for the betterment of youth.

Highlighting the major challenge confronted by the young people at the moment, Usman said a big chunk of youth was looking for the jobs in public and private sectors. 'Unfortunately, we have very less number of youth that prefer to start their own businesses.'

He urged the youth to come out of what he termed as a typical job-seeking mindset and said that the government had taken a number of initiatives for their grooming through provision of professional trainings and concessionary loans.

Usman Dar said the government's Youth Entrepreneurship Scheme (YES) received an overwhelming response as some 1.3 million people applied for availing the soft loans. Contrary, only 55,000 youth applied for the recently launched Hunarmand Pakistan- the largest-ever skill development programme.

He said the statistics at the YES indicated that only 0.2 million youth would be able to get the loans as most of the applicants did not come...