National Youth Development Council (NYDC) chairperson Saviour
Chishima says the biggest challenge youths in the country face in
paying back loans was lack of local business opportunities.
Dr Chishimba said at a youth meeting in Zimba district yesterday that
youths must be given business opportunities in order for them to excel
in entrepreneurship and reduce on low loan recovery rate.
He said there is need to accelerate youth employment in the
construction sector by awarding contracts to youth-led enterprises.
Dr Chishimba echoed the presidential directive that all contracts below
an amount of K10, 000 should be awarded to youth-led enterprises.
“How can you pay back when you are not given business? Why should
we bring a contractor from Lusaka just to come and paint an office
block when we have viable youths within Zimba? Small contracts
should be given to the locals and that should be the youth led
enterprises,” said Dr Chishimba.
He added that there is need to help the youths in rural communities in
their social economic sphere by giving them opportunities in their areas
of specialization such as agriculture and construction.
“ We have a lot of young farmers out there and we need to strategically
position them in ensuring that most of them have access to farming
inputs under the farmer input support program”, noted Dr Chishimba.
Dr Chishimba said youths in the country constitute a larger percentage
of the total population and that they were the driving seat of Zambia’s
economy hence the need to help them in entrepreneurship activities.
“There is no way we can develop the economy without targeting the
youth. Without empowering the youth we cannot develop”, He said.
He explained that the NYDC has opened one-stop youth service hubs in
all provincial centres in the country to help youths in entrepreneurship
and other youth activities.
He said most youths fail to access the youth fund and loans under the
CEEC due to the complexity of the application forms and that the hubs
will provide services to help overcome such problems.
Dr Chishimba said the NYDC has employed qualified graduates at the
provincial one-stop youth service hubs in order to give sufficient
technical support to youth entrepreneurs.
He said through the hubs, the NYDC will also conduct monitoring and
evaluation activities to ensure that funds accessed by youths are
properly utilized and profits are made to enable them pay back the
loans.
“What the ministry of youth and sport is lacking is a powerful and
effective monitoring tool which can help curb the low recovery rate of
the youth development fund. Youths once given that money they think
it’s for free and end up misusing it. We need to see an end to a situation
where top leaders in youth groups share this money and forget about it,” he said.
Dr Chishimba said there is need for effective monitoring and evaluation
of youth development activities to ensure that there is success and
positive productivity.
“As a council we want to come up with a viable monitoring and
evaluation tool for the youth development fund as well as capacity
building among our youths through skills training. Our youth lack
technical support and entrepreneurship skills and at the end we have a
low loan recovery rate. We have to help our youth to come up with
viable business ideas and contribute positively to the development of
Zambia’s economy, ” he said.
He also mentioned that the youth council was in a process of creating a
database on youth-led development enterprises in all districts in the
country.
He said identification of youth-led enterprises in districts through the
youth development index which will be submitted to the ministry of
works and supply will make it easy for government to award contracts
to identified youth entrepreneurs.
“We are creating a youth development index which will enable us know
the number of youth development enterprises and the type of businesses
they are venturing in. This data will be collected at district level and
submitted to our head office and we shall include it in our report to the
minister. We will also take it to the ministry of works and supply so that
these entrepreneurs can be identified for local contracts, ”he explained.
And Zimba District Administrative officer Sekani Tembo said the youth
development fund is for all youths in the country irrespective of their
political party affiliation.
Mr Tembo said all Zambian youths are entitled to youth loans given by
different sectors of government such as the CEEC, YDF, and women
empowerment and Gender.
He echoed that capacity building in youth entrepreneurship was cardinal
as it would yield good results and curb low loan recovery rates.
He added that government had released funds for creation of youth
skills development centres in all districts including new ones such as
Zimba.LT
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