Jowai: Meghalaya’s ruling National People’s Party (NPP) on Friday released its election manifesto promising to create 5 lakh “jobs and employment opportunities” every year to the youth of the state besides other promises.
The manifesto called the “People’s Document – Vision 2023-28” was released in Jowai, the district headquarters of West Jaintia Hills by Chief Minister Conrad Sangma in presence of Deputy Chief Minister Prestone Tynsong and other party candidates.
The document also encapsulates the idea that the party has achieved several milestones in the past five years in serving the citizens of the State that lays a strong foundation upon which the vision has been built to create a better society for all the citizens.
Noting that Meghalaya has the lowest unemployment rate of 1.8 percent across the country as per a Periodic Labour Force Survey report 2020-21, the document said, efforts would be made to create the “best start-up ecosystem” in the country and to continue creating a better support system to nurture the entrepreneurs.
“A special focus on entrepreneurship, tourism, agro-processing and knowledge/digital sectors in both the urban and rural areas of the state have been laid down. Skilling of youth has been planned through creation of multi-sectoral skill parks, exposure trips and livelihood sectors,” the manifesto reads.
Through its start-up programme dubbed “Prime hubs” 1500 youths have benefitted and became entrepreneurs. The party also assured 500 luxury tourist vehicles to be distributed to entrepreneurs in the tourism sector over the next five years.
The party said that it would also focus on identification and utilization of the abundant sporting potential of the state by providing world class sports facilities at the grassroot level including stadiums, training, talent identification and scholarships.
The party said that it would continue its support to farmers of the State through flagship programs such as FOCUS and FOCUS+ and expanded to cover all the producer households of the state irrespective of their area of residency.
“The party’s vision is to continue its support through specific mission mode projects and benefit all farmers by 2023-28. These interventions have already reaped great success to various farmers such as Lakadong where a whopping 13,000 farmers are now befitted, which was merely 1,000 five year back,” the NPP assured.
The NPP also promised to set up more village cooperative societies, processing and custom hiring centres, farmers markets, which the party said would benefit 10 lakh farmers across the state.
At the village level, the NPP said it would establish 1000 “Chief Minister’s Facilitation Centers” to deliver government services to every village. “The party also plans to engage a cadre of Village Community Facilitators to deliver the services to the last mile,” the manifesto stated.
It further said, every village would be connected by all-weather roads and RCC and steel bridges. “During the last five years, the rural road construction in Meghalaya has surpassed the total roads constructed by past governments in the last 20 years,” the manifesto pointed out.
The party also assured to “improved air connectivity, internet connection in all villages, IT park, water management and piped water to every household,” as part of its election promises.
The NPP said it would continue to focus on developing the health sector. “The party envisions to continue its success in this area, additionally new Chief Minister’s Affordable Drug Centers have been planned to provide affordable medicines for the people of Meghalaya,” the manifesto said.
“NPP’s vision is inclusive, realistic and futuristic to address the needs of various sections of Meghalaya,” the manifesto said.
