Senate Body Regrets Laps of Funds For Public Welfare

The Baloch Hal News

QUETTA: A Sub Committee of the Senate Standing Committee on Youth Affairs on Friday regretted that laps of funds of public welfare programmes were due to their non-utilization and negligence of relevant officials had caused failure of the projects.

The meeting of the Senate body was held with the Chairman Senator Abdul Ghaffar Qureshi and attended by the Member Senator Naeem Hussain Chattha, Senior Joint Secretary Ministry of Youth Affairs Islamabad Ms Suhaila Mushtaq, Secretary Youth Affairs, Government of Balochistan Muneer Ahmed Badini and other senior officials at Chief Secretary Balochistan Office here. The agenda of the meeting was Review of Position Payments of Stipends to Interns in Balochistan and other related issues.

The meeting was informed that a large number of applicants could not receive placement letters of internship programme due to no receiving of verification reports from universities while funds of various projects were lapsed as they were not utilized during stipulated time, resulting in further delay in launching the youth affairs projects.

Chairman Qureshi regretted that why officials of Ministry of Youth Affairs and provincial officials concerned avoid to pursue the issue of verification of degrees of applicants of Internship programs which results in increase in unemployment. He maintained the Federal government had allocated and released a lot of funds for internship programs but they were not utilized properly on the pretext of delay of degree verification process.

He raised question that why officials did not bother to make a telephone call to the universities administration to accelerate the verification process. He said that only Malakand and another university had online facility of degree verification. He recalled that Senate Committee had held a meeting with Vice Chancellors of the universities who presented stance that they were not providing online degree verification facility as it would decrease income of the varsities.

The Chairman said that the Senate Committee would ask the Higher Education Commission to make the universities bound to submit the degree verification of internship applicants timely instead delaying it for months. He noted that negligent attitude of relevant officials in Ministry of Youth Affairs, Provincial Youth Affairs Department and universities had caused surge in unemployment rate.

He directed the Youth Affairs and S& GAD Departments, Government of Balochistan to get services of some interns who should be given task of remain in touch with the universities administration for degree verification.

The Member Chattha said the officials should serve their people by ensuring issuance of internship placement letters to maximum numbers of youth so that issue of joblessness could be resolved in Balochistan. He said that due to having natural resources of mines and minerals and establishment of Gwadar Port, Balochistan was going to play a very significant role in the national economy in future. He said that keeping in view; the future role of Balochistan, there is dire need to provide technical training to the local youths.

Mr Badini said that he was ready to finalize action plan and PC-1 of Youth Development Centers in Balochistan if the federal government would provide funds for them. Responding to him, Ms Mushtaq said that she would ensure release of funds for construction of the centers’ buildings when she would receive their PC-1.