PANAJI
Chief Minister Pramod Sawant has attributed student stress to excessive mobile phone use. Replying to the motion of thanks on the Governor’s address in the Legislative Assembly, the Chief Minister pointed to ‘mobile phones’ being one of the reasons leading to stress among the student community.
“Many students are under stress for various reasons and mobile (phone use) is one of them… counselling centres have been started by the government,” the Chief Minister said.
“The stress is not because of the government,” he further said in a lighter vein, while replying to a related query by Leader of Opposition Yuri Alemao.
The Chief Minister, who also holds the Education portfolio, further emphasised that the State government has taken proactive measures to tackle the issue by arranging counsellors for students from schools to colleges.
“These counsellors have been assessing stress among students and their reports cite various reasons including mobile phones (resulting in stress),” he said, adding that the government is working to increase Goa’s happiness index.
Sawant’s statement comes at a time when cases of cybercrime involving students are reported to Goa Police. Short video content viral on various social media platforms is also allegedly distracting the youngsters.
Speaking about job opportunities, the CM stated that the Apprenticeship Training Scheme has seen close to 10,000 registrations. “We want to create a work culture in Goa through this scheme started… One year experience will be compulsory for Class C post,” he said.
While reeling out successes across other sectors, he also claimed that Goa has been declared ‘Kerosene free’ State as not a single application for LPG connection is currently pending. “All pending applications have been cleared,” he said.
Reacting to apprehensions surrounding regulatory hurdles on PayTM, CM assured the House that Goa has signed MoU with the online payment wallet “only to accept the UPI payment and not for any banking services.”
He clarified that the Central government’s crackdown on PayTM is on banking services and not UPI.
