PESHAWAR, Sept 7: NWFP Senior Minister Sirajul Haq has urged the federal government to revise its decision to provide loans at 6 per cent interest rate to unemployed youths and women under the ‘Rozgar Pakistan Scheme’ and said that providing jobless youths with interest-based loans would put them under heavy debts, instead of providing them any relief.

Under the scheme, loans amounting to Rs100 billion would be provided to the 2.5 million jobless youths.

He was talking to various delegations of jobless youth hailing from northern and southern districts, including Dir, Kohistan, Shangla, Lakki Marwat and Tank who called on him and requested him to approach the federal government to provide them with interest-free loans.

Sirajul Haq assured that the provincial government would contact the Federal authorities and ask them to remove poor people’s concerns.

He said that provision of high-interest loans to jobless people would increase their difficulties and create opportunities for their exploitation.

He said that such experiments had been made in the past but people and their families were virtually destroyed because most of the people could not afford to pay interest dues and had to sell everything they owned to get rid of the loans.—PPI