News / National
Minister dismiss alleged national service
19 Jan 2011 at 02:20hrs | Views
Minister Saviour Kasukuwere has dismissed reports that Zimbabwe plans to introduce national service training starting from pre-school as "unfortunate".
Kasukuwere said the reports were coming from people bent on destroying the image of the National Youths Service.
"Our budget is not even enough to introduce the training starting from preschool and I think those reports were developed by people who wanted to further their political interests.
"The reports are not true and those people have stretched their imagination a bit too far," said Minister Kasukuwere.
He said the implementation of the NYS programme was consistent with a Cabinet directive, the provision of Article 15 of the Global Political Agreement, the National Youth Policy of Zimbabwe and the African Youth Charter.
Minister Kasukuwere then chronicled how the NYS was revamped in May 2009 after signing of the GPA and formation of the inclusive government.
He chronicled several events that were held by representatives of all political parties since May 2009 to December last year in relation to the NYS.
These include formation of legal instruments and study visits to Tanzania and Rwanda, all in relation to the NYS.
He said the team, which went to Rwanda between November and December 2009, comprised of youth representatives of all the three political parties, which are signatories of the GPA, and they contributed to a draft document after their visit.
The document was adopted by the inter-ministerial committee of the working part of officials and further instructed the inter-ministerial committee to evaluate the recommendations.
"The paper now awaits submission to Cabinet. It should therefore be noted that the NYS programme is a youth development initiative which seeks to address skills development, unemployment, disaster management, leadership development among others," he said.
"It is important to note that the whole programme is purely a Government initiative in line with the national policy and there is no political party, which can claim direct ownership of the programme," he said.
Kasukuwere said the reports were coming from people bent on destroying the image of the National Youths Service.
"Our budget is not even enough to introduce the training starting from preschool and I think those reports were developed by people who wanted to further their political interests.
"The reports are not true and those people have stretched their imagination a bit too far," said Minister Kasukuwere.
He said the implementation of the NYS programme was consistent with a Cabinet directive, the provision of Article 15 of the Global Political Agreement, the National Youth Policy of Zimbabwe and the African Youth Charter.
Minister Kasukuwere then chronicled how the NYS was revamped in May 2009 after signing of the GPA and formation of the inclusive government.
These include formation of legal instruments and study visits to Tanzania and Rwanda, all in relation to the NYS.
He said the team, which went to Rwanda between November and December 2009, comprised of youth representatives of all the three political parties, which are signatories of the GPA, and they contributed to a draft document after their visit.
The document was adopted by the inter-ministerial committee of the working part of officials and further instructed the inter-ministerial committee to evaluate the recommendations.
"The paper now awaits submission to Cabinet. It should therefore be noted that the NYS programme is a youth development initiative which seeks to address skills development, unemployment, disaster management, leadership development among others," he said.
"It is important to note that the whole programme is purely a Government initiative in line with the national policy and there is no political party, which can claim direct ownership of the programme," he said.
Source - Byo24NEWS
