PTI’s political bastion: Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa yet to adopt youth policy

All provinces lag behind Punjab after introducing the policy in 2012

ISLAMABAD: While boasting of its popularity among the country’s youth, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf-led government in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa has yet to adopt a youth policy in the wake of the 18th amendment.

Punjab is the only province to have introduced the youth policy in 2012 while others are still struggling to come up with such an initiative.

“The incumbent [K-P] government has started working on the issue during the last six months,” Assistant Director Youth Affairs Arshad Hussain told The Express Tribune.

According to an estimate, the number of youth (aged less than 29 years) is 71.57% of the total population in K-P and has an unemployment rate of 8.5% which is higher compared to the country’s overall joblessness ratio of 6%.



Arshad Hussain said that during the cabinet meeting some amendments were proposed and a committee was constituted to further fine tune the draft policy during the month of July.

Some salient features of the policy include formation of a job bank, youth-led mass campaigns for inter-faith and intra-faith harmony and against hate speech, introduction of peace education in the curricula, inculcate sense of active citizenship, respect for rule of law and participation in the government decision making at municipal, provincial and national levels.

“It is a matter of days,” said Amjad Afridi, adviser to the provincial chief minister on sports tourism, culture and youth affairs.

Responding to a question, he clarified that the provincial government is not dragging its feet and has completed homework for the policy, adding that the policy will be tabled in the next cabinet meeting. Sabiha Shaheen, executive director of Bargad, a non-governmental organization that has been associated with the consultations in drafting the policy, said that the process of youth policy development is unprecedented in the history of public policy.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 15^th,  2015.