Climate ministry focusing on creation of jobs for youth

Islamabad: The climate change ministry is sorting out modalities to implement the ‘Green Stimulus’ project focusing on creation of a large number of jobs for unemployed youth and restore natural ecosystems in the country.

According to the latest record, the project would be implemented in three phases with the help of the federal government and would be completed in shortest possible time. The record showed that the focal areas for intervention would include planting trees, reviving protected areas and sanitation improvement while the targeted beneficiaries would be the unemployed youth and women and daily wagers currently out of jobs and migrating to rural areas.

It is part of 5-point green agenda introduced by Prime Minister Imran Khan including Ten Billion Trees Tsunami, Clean Green Initiative, Plastic Ban, Electric Vehicles Policy and Recharge Pakistan Initiative.

It revealed that the first phase would be fully funded through budgetary provisions and the focus is to upscale the activity and give priority to creation of green jobs. “The second phase will be the post-Covid-19 recovery phase, for which substantial support funds worth 60-100 million dollars will be secured through multi-lateral donors.

It will further expand the activities to include establishment of a National Parks Service and support sanitation activities,” it said. This phase will be carried out in at least 20 main cities of the country, creating employment in hundreds of thousands— estimated at 600,000 daily-wage jobs.

The third phase will be to structure “Debt for Nature” swaps based on the credible ongoing activity and the renegotiation of Pakistan’s burgeoning debt with countries supporting a green revival of the global economy

The climate change ministry claimed that thousands of jobs were created through Billion Tree Tsunami project and it would imitate the trend in its upcoming projects to create job opportunities for unemployed people.