Kathmandu, Jan. 13: A two-day seminar organised by the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Culture for participants of the youth mobilisation programme for rural and community development began in Lalitpur today.

Inaugurating the seminar, Minister for Youth, Sports and Culture Sharat Singh Bhandari said that this programme implemented by the government since last year in keeping with the policy of tapping youth in the campaign of national development has turned out to be fruitful and result-oriented.

He also observed that rural and community development workers have to play an important role to uplift the living standards of the rural people who are deprived of basic needs including education.

Secretary at the Ministry Shreeman Shrestha said that His Majesty’s Government has put forth a variety of result-oriented programmes in line with its youth self-employment programme.

Joint secretaries at the Ministry Dilaya Kumar Bista and Dr. Saphalya Amatya spoke of the importance of the programme for enhancing the capabilities and skills of youths.

Under the youth mobilisation programme for rural and community development, some 350 jobless graduates will be sent out on observation tours to 40 different districts of the country for one month this year.

The youths will identify the problems faced by rural people, share experience with people from different walks of life, participate in developmental programmes, foster local awareness against evil practices like early marriage, polygamy and girl trafficking and encourage people in creative work.

Within one month after completion of their assignments, they will submit reports on the problems of the locations where they were deployed and possible remedial measures.

Meanwhile, our staff reporter adds, at the seminar paper on Nepalese Rural Economy was presented by Dr Chiranjibi Nepal and Deepak Subedi while papers on the Objective of the Programme   was presented by Bishnu Nath Sharma and Nirmal Raj Kafle. Other papers presented at the seminar today were on The Role of Youth in Social Development by Dileep Bista and Chitra Bahadur Karki and a paper on Population, Reproduction, Health and Environment   by Ajit Pradhan and Harischandra Rai. During the past year Youth Ministry signed up 249 University graduates  to go to different VDCs of nineteen districts and work for rural and community development.

Students up to the age of twenty nine years with a bachelor’s degree are eligible for this program. The Ministry aims to mobilise twenty thousand youth in a period  of five years and is mobilising three hundred fifty students this year.