FAISALABAD: State Minister for Information & Broadcasting Farrukh Habib said on Saturday that youth were real asset of Pakistan and the PTI focus was on to produce business entrepreneurs instead of generating a lot of job seekers.

Addressing the 2nd Annual Convocation of Government Postgraduate College for Women Samanabad here, he said the government had allocated Rs 28 billion to provide scholarships to 2.6 million talented students belonging to the lower and middle class.

He said that just few days ago, the PM had launched an innovative project of scholarship complaint portal so that students could lodge their complaints regarding any misappropriation in the distribution of scholarships.

He proudly announced that Ehsaas programme had been ranked 4th among 3400 welfare programmes of the world in the World Bank’s ranking.

He said the programme offered a multilateral support to the people of different categories.

The Ehsaas programme was providing sustenance to more than 7 million people and now the government was contemplating to offer monthly stipend to their children. The primary student would get a month stipend of Rs 1500 while it would be Rs 3000 for the middle-class student, he added.

Farrukh Habib said that Prime Minister Imran Khan was making serious efforts to weed out child labor and divert this neglected lot toward schools so that they could contribute their productive role in the overall development of Pakistan.

He said that earlier, middle class families had to sell out their assets for the education of their children in public sector universities. But the government had now decided to offer 200,000 scholarships to the families with monthly income of less than Rs 45,000 and Special Assistant to Prime Minister (SAPM) on Poverty Alleviation & Social Safety Dr Sania Nishtar was looking after this gigantic programme very efficiently, he added.

He said the Punjab government was also doing best for the education sector. The primary schools were being upgraded up to middle and middle up to high school level in addition to providing missing facilities in these institutions.

The State Minister said the government was also trying to launch evening classes in those institutions where these were missing up till now. The teachers’ transfer system had also been uploaded online to facilitate the teaching community, he said.

He further said the government had diverted its attention towards the technical education.

In this connection, technical universities were being established in the country including three such universities in Punjab, he said and added these universities would impart technical skills and expertise to the 120 million youth so that they could be acquired by the industrial sector.

He said that for hi-tech education, 100,000 scholarships had so far been given while another 100,000 were in the pipeline.

The minister said the government had allocated Rs 10 billion for Kamyab Jawan programme. “Our youth are most talented and excelled in IT sector”, he said, adding “our IT export was 800 million dollars which is expected to jump to 3 billion dollars during the PTI tenure”.

He also underlined the need for promoting positive social attitude in the country and said that teachers and students must play their due role in making Pakistan a livable country. He congratulated the passed out graduates and said that the government was providing them easy loans enabling them to start their own businesses instead of running after the jobs.

MPA Firdous Rae, College Principal Shahida Rae and faculty members were also present on the occasion.