The youth and sports ministry has taken up a Tk 70 billion project to create self-employment and alleviate poverty.
It aims at making the huge portion of the population, who have left the cities due to a lack of jobs amid the coronavirus lockdown, stay in their villages.
State Minister for Youth and Sports Zahid Ahsan Russel revealed the information during “Let’s Talk on Post COVID-19 Youth Development” on Thursday.
Young Bangla, the youth platform of the Awami League’s Centre for Research and Information, organises the show, now online only via video conferencing due to the outbreak.
Russel said the ministry targeted to self-employ 1.2 million youths, reports bdnews24.com.
They will get training, mainly on agriculture and fisheries so that they can even create jobs for others instead of getting frustrated, the state minister said.
The project papers were at the planning ministry. It got some recommendations during a meeting at the Prime Minister’s Office while youths also expressed their views on it.
Russel said another project to ensure employment of 200,000 youths in 2020 and 2021 was under way. It was named Bangabandhu Youth Development to mark the birth centenary of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
The young entrepreneurs will get soft loans of up to Tk 100,000 under the project.