On the occasion of ‘World Youth Skills Day’ observed on July 15, Nagaland Governor, P B Acharya stressed on the need to empower the youth of Nagaland through skill development in order to strengthen their capacity and help address the many challenges faced by the society, including unemployment, poverty, and development.
In his message, Acharya said Nagaland with five universities, 300 thousand graduates and 20 lakh population, is one of the educationally empowered states in the country.
“India is proud that today with 68 per cent of our 125 crore population being youths, India is the youngest country in the world,” he added.
He said that the United Nations had declared July 15 as World Youth Skills Day to highlight at a global level, the importance of youth skills development with a goal to achieve better socio-economic conditions for today’s youth and to address the challenges of unemployment and under employment.
According to the United Nations data, Achraya said the youth were almost three times more likely to be unemployed than adults and continuously exposed to lower quality of jobs, greater labour market inequalities, and longer and more insecure school-to-work transitions. He therefore encouraged the youth to embrace work culture and be positive towards entrepreneurship.
In order to supplement this he said educational institutions should introduce skill based courses in their curriculum so that the school-to-work transitions is minimized.
Acharya also highlighted about the various government schemes and programmes to help students’ start-up their life after completion of studies.
For this, he said institutions should make the students know and understand the welfare schemes and programmes offered by the government.
Universities, students’ organizations, NGOs, all organized groups like Self Help Groups (SHGs), ex-servicemen, scouts & guides, Red Cross Society etc. can take up skill training with the cooperation from government Skill Development department and train any youth and empower the society, he added.
“There is no better investment than helping a young person to develop his or her abilities,” he asserted. He said schemes/loan from ‘Mudra Bank’ could help motivate the youth to be entrepreneurs.
Acharya said under the initiative of Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, ‘Mudra Bank’ with Rs 12000 crore capital, has opened the flood gates for the skilled youth to become entrepreneurs and job givers and not job seekers.