By Roselyn Phiri

Minister of Youth and Sports, Richard Chimwendo Banda (R) and Youth and Society (YAS) Executive Director, Charles Kajoloweka following the proceedings of the youth conference.

Lilongwe, September 21, Mana: National Youth Conference (NYC) is geared to promote good governance in the country.

Speaking during the Conference, Youth and Society Team Leader, Charles Kajoloweka said the Malawi 2063 Agenda already recognizes strength of governance systems as one of core enablers if the country was to achieve that long term vision set for the country.

“We came to cast that  vote of confidence in a better governance that if we fix the current governance challenges including corruption, the chances are very high that we are going to progress in achieving the development targets that we have put in place.

“If you look at the resources that we are losing to corruption for example, there are quite a number of them those are the resources that we would have put into the strategic social services for the benefit of youth those resources should have gone to education, health and social protection but we are loosing out because of the licking bucket and all that points of the poor governance,” he said.

Kajoloweka highlighted that people look at the politicians as the government not ordinary people but looking at all systems in place there are a number of actors involved, therefore the country must continue to demand accountability from the duty bearers to insure that they play by the rules.

He appreciated the availability of government officials and there honest engagement that they have done.

“We are having constructive and objective engagement and we appreciate the government willingness to listen to alternative voices at the end of this conference we hope that what will come out of this conference will going to be representative on various stakeholders including government perspective,” the leader said.

He explained that they hope that this constructive engagement continues and beyond the conference they would want to see government taking action based on the recommendations of the conference.

Minister of Youth and Sports, Richard Chimwendo Banda commended the conference and agreed with the youth saying the issues that are being raised are real.

He said the government has come up to account to what was happening.

“We accounted on number of issues including the empowerment of young people, we know that a lot of them are just staying they needed to be busted in terms of capital to start businesses and entrepreneurship activities that is why we introduced Neef loans,” Banda added.

Minister added that government looked into budgeting and budget tracking, the issues to do with the investments of youth and budget allocations.

“The government has increased a number of youth that are benefiting when it comes to students loans,enrollment has increased and also a number of upkeep which has a been a problem within the year has also been improved,” he explained.

The Minister said they are constructing hostels within colleges, they know that there are issues of bed space which was still critical, a challenge for most of young people across the country and they have a number of investments that the government was doing.

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