Morung Express News
Kohima | March 24
Advocating strongly for the younger demographic of the Naga population, MLA Merentoshi today appealed the government for a ‘youth budgeting’ where each department can allot a percentage to focus on youth related activities, provide skills and training which can empower them to generate employment on their own.
The 37 years old MLA spoke on the problems of the youth, urging the government to give more efforts during the 15th session of the 12th NLA. “There is a growing frustration level among the youth. We have only just recently faced a very unfortunate and unprecedented situation which has even led to the loss of two young lives. Though we know that this movement, which many are calling as people’s movement, was spearheaded by the elders of the society yet it could be carried forward because of the huge participation of the youth. If we examine closely, the ULB was just a point for them to take, I feel that it was a culmination of many other issues that has been building up over the years and therefore I think our government needs to address these problems at the earliest. We need to address the problems of the youth and remove this growing frustration so that we can avoid such situation in the future,” said Merentoshi.
He posited that when a person is left idle, a lot of negativity and frustration tends to build up. “We see in the social networking sites how much negativity is there against the government. And therefore, our youth and their problems need to be addressed. The government has taken a lot of steps . I think we need to put a little more effort in addressing these problems,” he stated.
Despite the commendable works in the fields of sports, Merentoshi viewed that the youth in the State is lacking behind in proper sports infrastructure, state of the art sports infrastructure. “Efforts on decorative and dimensional stone plant in Dimapur and Wazeho, are good platforms for our youth to start working in exploring the natural resource that we have,” highlighted the MLA.
He however pointed out that even though the state has a lot of natural resources, most of it unfortunately lies in the interior area or border area and transportation becomes a problem, and the cost of production is high. Therefore he suggested working ways to transport these goods at a lower cost, such as cable cars and ropeways to transport goods from the interior areas to the urban sector.
“Employment in the government has crossed the saturation level. The Government should not be looked as a source of employment but as a source of generating employment,” said Merentoshi, who appealed to the government to put forward a policy on youth budgeting where each department can earmark a certain percentage to concentrate on youth related activities.
“This percentage need not mean that we will provide employment to the youth but let it be a certain area where we can encourage them, skill them to find their own livelihood. This will benefit the young people in a very big way,” stated the MLA.
With the country and the world moving towards a paradigm shift, where the youth are taking the lead in decision making, Merentoshi noted that the youth may not be part of the government however “many nations are making the decisions based on the pulse of the youth, and on the voice of the youth and therefore our government should also reconsider and rethink while making decisions for the future by listening to the voice of the youth.”
“Our government has been always speaking of transparency, accountability and good governance and therefore while implementing our works, I request members of the August House that let us implement these words through our action,“ he concluded.
