ApnaBundelkhand.com, Lucknow: To open up job avenues for the youths of Bundelkhand region, State Minister for Rural Development Daddu Prasad has asked his department to take the educated rural youth on board in the technical structure of schemes like Swarnjayanti Grameen Swarozgar Yojna (SGSY) and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS).

The department has also been asked to train the youth in tasks pertaining to the monitoring and implementation of these schemes.

The decision is an extension of Chief Minister Mayawati’s announcement made in Jhansi on January 29, 2008, seeking the provision of vocational training to the unskilled educated youth throughout the state to make them job-ready.

 

"After the chief minister announced that unemployed youths will be turned into skilled labourers, we started vocational training programmes, with Bundelkhand being our focus area. Now, we have over 10,000 youngsters who have received training that enable us to employ them in schemes like SGSY and MNREGS.”

With nearly 10,000 youths completing various training programmes, the government is now looking at enrolling them under the said schemes.

Adding that jobs like rozgar mate and rozgar sewaks under MNREGS have now been opened for these skilled youngsters, Prasad said: "The rozgar mates and rozgar sewaks form an important part of the implementation of MNREGS. Youngsters with good planning and accounting skills can handle the job and with each village seeing at least one task round the year, it is not difficult to employ youths from the village itself.”

Some of the training centres have also conducted basic training courses in photography, which are expected to come in handy during monitoring and social audit reporting of NREGS tasks.


The official added: "We will be able to pick trained youngsters from these centres to do these jobs. Also under SGSY, they can avail of loans to buy the necessary equipment.”

 

A senior official with the department said: "To ensure transparency, we take photographs at the beginning of a task, halfway through the task and also on completion of the task. When social audits are held, it is mandatory to get them photographed and videographed.”