Youths call for more govt support

THE Morobe provincial youth council is calling on all nine Morobe MPs to have strategies in place and put more funding to support youth programmes and projects in their respective  electorates or districts if they were serious about minimising law and order problems. 
Secretary of the council, Francis Masiang, said many problems now being faced in towns and the rural areas were because young people, “especially those without proper education and without prospects of getting a job”, felt they were being marginalised.
Masiang said other factors that contributed to disillusionment in young people included limited access to relevant education and vocational training, lack of employment opportunities, lack of youth programmes and project funding, rapid social and economical changes, family and community breakdown and drug and alcohol abuse.
He said young people were also finding it harder to communicate with their parents and so were hanging around in peer groups because no attention had been given to them.
He said although there was a provincial youth policy, this had not been implemented and he blamed the division of community development for not giving it prominence.
Masiang said that all political leaders of the province should seriously look at the plight of young people and youth issues.