Sindh government would provide loans of Rs 12 billion to 35,000 unemployed youngsters under the "Waseela-e-Haq Sindh" scheme with co-ordination of Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP). President Asif Ali Zardari would inaugurate this scheme on Friday today
This was said by the Chairperson BISP Farzana Raja addressing on the occasion of signing ceremony held at Chief Minister's House here on Thursday. She said that Sindh government has launched this new scheme with close co-ordination of BISP because BISP is already operating schemes like this and we have complete data of youngsters of country including Sindh with qualification of minimum Metric and age between 19 to 35 years, she added.
She said that BISP collected data of unemployed youngsters male and female during the poverty survey while, this scheme has been launched by Sindh government with cost of RS.12 billion. She said that President Asif Ali Zardari would inaugurate this scheme and loans of Rs 0.3 million would be given through computerised balloting, Sindh Bank would disburse the amount of loan to every eligible youngster, she added.
Farzana explained that data available with BISP is about 8 to 9 months' old so that our teams would re-verify the names of eligible youngsters after balloting then the amount would be given to them. She made it clear that loans would be interest-free and would be given on easy-instalments adding that first one year would be counted as grace period; BISP would collect the instalments from the next year, she added.
Chairperson BISP said that short trainings would given with business counselling to the lucky youngsters whose names would be chosen through computerised balloting while our teams would also monitor them whether they are doing businesses or not, she added.
Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah said while delivering concluding speech that Waseela-e-Haq Sindh scheme is an initiative to reduce poverty from province.
He said that there is a huge poverty in province and government can't end this but PPP-led provincial government is trying of their best to reduce it with providing jobs and loans to youngsters. He announced that Sindh government would initiate one more scheme soon with cost of about Rs 2 to 3 billion of same kind in order to provide maximum relief to poor people of province.
He said that some anti-government elements are producing rumours that PPP has done nothing for the people of country but the spending of about RS.100 billion on poor people through BISP is one of the best examples of this government regarding the provision of relief to the poor people, he added.
Qaim Ali Shah said that BBSYDP is also an initiative of provincial government, more than 0.1 million youngsters have been trained and they are doing small businesses and jobs in private sector as well. Sindh Minister for Finance Syed Murad Ali Shah said in his speech that about 35,000 youngsters means about 35 youngsters from every union council of province would be given loans of Rs 0.3 million which would gear-up economic revolution in the lives of more than 2 million families, he added.
He said that this scheme has been launched on the directives of President Asif Ali Zardari and Sindh government would inject more money in this scheme with completing first Rs 12 billion. Members of provincial cabinet including Shazia Marri, Agha Siraj Durani, Ayaz Soomro, Zahid Bhurgri, Muzafar Shujrah, Dr Rafiq Banbhan, Ali Nawaz Shah Rizwi and others were present in the event.