11 Apr 2013

Deputy Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Culture, Mr Jefferson Siamisang has refuted allegations that youth who attended the boot camp at Pandamatenga were sexually harassed.

Mr Siamisang was responding to Southern District councillors in a full council meeting. The councillors raised the concern following newspaper reports that youth sent to the military training camp under the Youth Empowerment Scheme (YES) were sexually abused.

He also refuted allegations that members of the media were not allowed to enter the area where participants stayed. He said the ministry selected Pandamatenga over Kang because the place was safer.

More importantly, it kept young people in check by way of certain prohibitions such as those against alcohol consumption. He said male participants lived separately from females; the young men lived with male soldiers recruits while females also stayed with female soldiers in barracks.

Mr Siamisang appealed to councillors and other local authorities to join hands in assisting youth to utilise government programmes meant for improvement of their lives and to avoid useless controversies.

He said youth were the backbone of the country and deserved to be guided by elders. Mr Siamisang indicated that youth were vulnerable to poverty, unemployment, HIV/AIDS, criminal activities and road accidents.

He appealed to councillors to include youth oriented projects in their District Development Plan (DDP). He also appealed to them to instil in youth a culture of business as most of their projects had collapsed.

Mr Siamisang indicated that youth were impatient in business and various challenges encountered by youth such as delays in paying for their projects, lack of market and water rights difficulties in diversifying their businesses made many of them fail in business.

In responce, the councillors concurred that youth should be involved more in decision making, especially when youth policies were being formulated. They said, youth were currently not allowed to air their views and ideas.

The councillors also said youth were greatly discouraged by the time it took for them to be allocated land. They complained that the ministry was failing to monitor and mentor youth projects, which led to the collapse of many of the projects.

They said all the beautiful talk about youth projects came to nothing as long as youth were not helped to implement the ideas. Councillors also called for construction of a stadium in Kanye, which they said was long overdue.

They said the stadium would help keep youth busy as they would spend time playing instead of drinking and engaging in crime. ENDS