July 11, 2008	Friday	Rajab 7, 1429

KARACHI, July 10: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah on Thursday ordered immediate steps for initiating implementation of the “Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Youth Development Programme”.

Under the programme, 100,000 skilled youths would be provided employment in the country and abroad within a year after being imparted training in their fields. The programme is a part of the strategy conceived by Pakistan People’s Party’s assassinated chairperson Benazir Bhutto to check unemployment among youths.

The employment under this skilled development programme will be in addition to the recruitment of 40,000 on the positions in different government departments laying vacant for a couple of years. The government has decided to fill up all the vacancies on merit.

In this regard, a schedule has already been chalked out to select youths for the posts requiring qualification of matriculation, intermediate and graduation. The selected candidates would be paid a stipend of Rs4,000, Rs5,000 and Rs7,000 per month, respectively.

In order to ensure transparency in the selection process, advertisements are being placed in newspapers to call applications from the candidates. The advertisements are likely to appear in Sunday issue of newspapers, a source privy to the meeting held on Thursday at the CM’s House told Dawn.

The meeting, attended by all secretaries and heads of the departments, was chaired by the chief minister, who directed the officials to implement all decisions of the government in letter and spirit. No slackness would be tolerated, he warned.

Mr Shah said that secretaries and heads of departments were supposed to be accountable to the government, which was committed to good governance and relief to masses. He stressed on result-oriented measures for the implementation of the government’s policies so that people could get their problems solved. He observed that the masses had been waiting for the solution of their problems since long, adding: “Now when the elected government is in place, they expect an end to their miseries.”

The chief minister directed the department concerned to chalk out a programme for the distribution of state lands among landless farmers under the government’s land grant policy.

“Arrangements for the land distribution at taluka, UC and deh levels should be completed with in 10 days so that the deserving farmers could get their ownership documents in a month or so,” he said.