President Pranab Mukherjee on Friday said creation of jobs posed the biggest challenge for the country today as more than ten lakh youths enter the job market every year.
“This can be met only by ensuring overall development, especially creation of infrastructure and educational facilities, in villages and generating job opportunities there so that the youth do not leave villages in search of greener pastures in cities,” said the President while speaking after laying the foundation stone of a Driver’s Training Institute and a secondary school under the Smartgram initiative in the village of Dhaula in Gurugram district.
He also inaugurated three new Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Kendras (PMKKs) in Mahendragarh, Ambala and Palwal.
The President had earlier this year announced to adopt 50 villages in the State to develop them as smart villages. last year, he had adopted five villages in Haryana — Alipur, Daula, Harchandpur and Tajnagar in Gurgaon district, and Rozkameo in Mewat district — to develop them as smart villages.
Speaking on the occasion, the President said our villages not only had the capacity to develop but the residents were eager for development.
“If we keep moving ahead in this manner, the day is not far when our youth would not need to leave villages for cities in search of better avenues. I firmly believe that our country will develop only when our villages develop. Even today, 68 per cent of our population lives in villages. If we want that our villages should prosper, we would have to improve the structure of our economy”, he said.
Mukherjee said it was also possible to enable our daughters to complete their education in nearby villages. Good and affordable health services should be made available to all and the youth should be given training and employed in the vicinity of villages, said he.
The President said when the smartgram initiative was launched on July 2, 2016, he felt that the work which had been done to make President’s estate a smart township could be replicated in villages as well. With the help of the Haryana Government, Rashtrapati Bhavan selected five villages and many initiatives have been taken for their development. Keeping in view the success achieved in these five villages, the programme has now been extended to 100 villages, he added.
Earlier, welcoming the President, Haryana Chief Minister Manohar lal, announced that Taoru tehsil of Nuh district would be upgraded to sub-division status and the SDM would hoist the National Flag there on the occasion of Independence Day.
As many as 1,000 villages in the State would be developed as smart grams under the Swa Prerit Smart Gram Scheme, he added.
Detailing the steps taken to ensure faster growth of the state, the Chief Minister said a new scheme namely, Deen Bandhu Haryana Gram Uday Yojana, had been launched for developing villages having a population of 3,000 to 10,000. An amount of Rs 1,200 crore would be spent on these villages, said he.
In the villages having more than 10,000 population, the Haryana Swarn Jayanti Maha Gram Yojana has been implemented under which sewerage and other facilities on the pattern of cities would be provided, said the Chief Minister.
Manohar lal said Haryana had already been declared kerosene-free state from April 1, 2017 and after three weeks, i.e. from 23rd June, all villages would become open defecation free (ODF).
The Union Minister of State for Planning and Urban Development, Rao Inderjit Singh, Union Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, and Union Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas, Dharmendra Pradhan also addressed the gathering.
On this occasion, certificates were distributed to students and trainees under various initiatives. Besides, MoUs were exchanged between Gram Panchayat, Daula, and the NSDC and ONGC. Commitment letters were also exchanged between Rashtrapati Bhavan and KVIC, Konark Energy Solutions and IFFCO.