PANAJI
Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar on Monday said that the State government will focus on the development of the youth in the State during its next five-year term.
“In this term, we took up various initiatives for various sections of the society. Targeting exclusively the youth, we have completed all our field work. We have already received the final approval for ESDM, Tuem. In the next five years, our focus will be exclusively on the youth,” said Parsekar.
He was speaking after rolling out the ‘Goa Yuva Samvad Yojana’ for youth in the age group of 16 to 30 years. Under this scheme, every registered beneficiary youth will get a free monthly pack comprising free local 100 minutes voice calls, free 3 GB 3G or 4G data pack with 2 mbps download speed and a one-time free SIM card. Additionally, Vodafone, which was the successful bidder, has announced to add e-wallet facility for the beneficiaries.
The Chief Minister also appealed to the youth to utilise the scheme for making cashless transactions. Stating that the government is focused on youth development, he said, “To create job avenues for a cyber-literate state of Goa, we initiated steps to set up ESDM at Tuem and IT Park at Chimbel. We have already set up IT Hub. Both these projects have the capacity to change lives of Goa’s youth.” He also pointed out that the State government has set up the Investment Promotion Board to attract investment and create job avenues for Goa. “Projects cannot come up overnight. By now, we have sanctioned 134 projects during the last 19 months which have a capacity to generate employment to the extent of 23,384. However, 16 projects have been completed, of which six have already begun operations. Twenty five others are in the pipeline,” Parsekar informed. The State government is likely to spend about Rs 1 crore a month on this scheme which is expected to benefit about 1.25 lakh youth in the State.
Application forms to avail the scheme will be made available at 500 retail outlets in the State of the selected service provider. Scheme will be available in prepaid connections only. The scheme will be implemented through M/s Goa Electronics Limited for a period of three years since
its inception.
