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Momodou
Denmark
11829 Posts |
 Posted - 16 Nov 2009 : 20:37:26
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Youths in National Development
YOUTH PLATFORM
By Baba Sillah
As the saying goes, youths are the future leaders of tomorrow; therefore they have a great role to play in the socio economic development of the nation.
The progressive and sustainable development aspirations of this nation cannot be fully achieved without the full participation of the youths. So therefore, it is the duty and responsibility of every youth to be creative and determined towards the development of the nation.
But today there are a lot of factors that urgently need to be addressed if youths are to be meaningfully engaged in this drive. Factors such as unemployment, lack of skills, drug abuse, prostitution and other crimes really need to be addressed by the state. The most important factor that really needs to be solved urgently is unemployment which may be the root cause of all the factors mentioned. So the state therefore should create and provide job opportunities and a conducive environment for its youth folk so that these factors can be eradicated in our country.
In my candid and humble view, I think the state should create and provide skill centers whereby many youths can acquire skills. And more factories should be built which can employ up to five hundred youths. Development should also be decentralized so that migration from rural to urban areas can be minimized. And for this to be achieved, dialogue and mobilization of youths across the country would be vital so that constraints they are facing would clearly be known and strategies can be implemented in order to tackle these problems.
For the past years, many youths have embarked on illegal migration to Europe.Lots of lives have been lost on their perilous journey, and if we ask ourselves what are the factors that force these youths to venture into this perilous journey, the answer most of these youths would give is because their lives seem to be in limbo due of lack of job opportunities, and there is no hope for them to stay here and make a decent living.
Because they want to help their parents to make their living condition at least better, especially when a neighbor, a friend or other goes and comes back to make an exclusive change in his/her family’s living conditions. But who is to blame? As I just mentioned before, the factors behind these should thoroughly be addressed and solved immediately, otherwise there will be no hope for the youths in this present generation.
I belief that for the past few years, lot of money was unnecessarily given to individuals rather than groups or associations who can invest that money to develop themselves and the entire public. Here in the Gambia,we have a lot of resources which are yielded on seasonal basis. For example: mangoes, oranges and even the produce from the farm and the garden which can be properly processed and preserved for consumption provided we have the industrial capability like factories. Creating job opportunities for the youths to generate income for the state and the entire public will just be one of the benefits. But these produce are not beneficial to us in the current state as they get spoilt due to the lack of preservation methods.
I am humbly calling on the government and all stakeholders – especially the giant companies – as government alone cannot do it, to look into this. I do believe that we all have a role to play as citizens. We have to pave the way for our younger and future generations coming, before it will be too late. We have to come up with comprehensive strategies to build industries which can enable us to preserve our resources and create job opportunities for the youths before they will risk their lives on this perilous journey. They are the future leaders of tomorrow, as the saying goes, “if there is no youth, there will be no future”.
They are the foundation block of the country, so their views should and must be really put into consideration in order to achieve sustainable development.
Source: Daily News
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