Take advantage of empowerment initiative, youths told

Sat, 10 Feb 2018 11:31:47 +0000

By BENNIE MUNDANDO

TAKE advantage of youth the empowerment initiative to better your lives Youth in Action for Sustainable Development (YASD) programmes manager, Zebedy Lukwesa Zebedy has said.

Mr Lukwesa said youths should take advantage of the initiative because they would not have another regime that would take care of their interests like the PF had done.

Speaking to the Daily Nation yesterday, Mr. Lukwesa said Government had tried its best to ensure that young people and women were empowered.

He noted that in some cases, such beneficiaries did not put the monies they were receiving to good use but expected government to continue helping them with entrepreneurial advancement.

Mr. Lukwesa said as long as beneficiaries of the youth empowerment programme still looked to other people to provide them with employment to make ends meet, poverty and unemployment levels will remain high.

“Empowerment is the biggest equaliser to national development. Poverty levels and unemployment especially among youths have remained relatively high and this empowerment programme seems to be a solution to many of these changes.

“But if the beneficiaries do not change their mind-set and use these monies prudently to improve not only their lives but the lives of other youths in the country through employment provision, we will not realise the intention of such good initiatives”, said Mr. Lukwesa

“We have always said that Government cannot employ all of us at a given time. As a matter of fact, there is no government in this world that will provide jobs to all its citizens but it is from such programmes that people maximise their full potential.

“Time to change the mind-set that when one goes to school they must wait until they are employed is gone because employment opportunities will not cater for everyone,” Mr. Lukwesa added.

He advised young people to be innovative and put to good use, all the monies they were getting from Government.

“Youths must not let Government down because it has done what no other regime had attained for them. The current Government has created a robust empowerment programme for everyone and the best we can do is to reciprocate this favour with sincerity in everything that we are doing.

“If you are empowered through a revolving fund, it only makes sense that you return the monies at the right time so that your fellow youths can also benefit just like you have done other than defaulting because when you do so, you are derailing the programme and this makes it difficult for Government to achieve its objective,” he said.