THE federal government has announced virtual internships for graduates and final-year students through its Kamyab Jawan Internship Programme. While the programme aims at empowering youth, it offers a limited number of opportunities in a few selected fields.

The programme offers only 500 internship opportunities in popular disciplines, such as Law, Public Administration, Engineering, Food Technology, Marketing, Finance and Business, while the rest of the fields have been ignored. Besides, the duration of the paid internship programme is only 35 days which is not enough to gain experience and learn the required skills.

The government is well aware of the fact that millions of graduates are unemployed in the country. This decision to select only 500 graduates is beyond comprehension.

The government should have selected at least 50,000 interns having 16 years of education or equivalent degree for a duration of 12 months, as was the case in 2016-17 and beyond.

Imtiaz Junejo
Hyderabad

Published in Dawn, May 28th, 2021