By Rungano Dzikira

In line with Government’s thrust on youth empowerment, and saving livelihoods, Government has unveiled ZWL$17 million youth fund aimed at relieving youth businesses during and post Covid-19 pandemic.

Speaking during a twitter live broadcast, this Thursday, the Minister of Sports, Youth, Arts and Recreation, Kirsty Coventry, said that Government was trying to open up frontiers for youths to ensure that they remain productive during and after the lockdown and Corona pandemic.

“Government unveiled ZWL$17 million to support and cushion youths during and after the Corona pandemic. And as a ministry we have spilt up the youths into two. We have set up, the United Program for Artists and Athletes of Zimbabwe (UPAZIM) which is meant to carter for those into arts and sports.

“While for youths we also identified essentially two groups within youths that is youth businesses run by young people and youth organisations which usually do volunteering who will benefit from this scheme,” she said.

Concurring with Coventry, Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Mthuli Ncube added that Government had also instituted the saving lives and saving livelihoods scheme by firstly saving lives.

“We are testing, quarantining people followed by treatment as a way of saving lives. Then moving to livelihoods, we have had to make cash transfers to those who lost their livelihoods.

“So far we have tried to assist at least one million people across Zimbabwe and we will be able to scale up to 3.5 million people who we will be paying ZWL$200 cash transfer per month as a grant basic,” he said.

We also acknowledged that it was going to be difficult for youths to grow their businesses after the lockdown and corona virus, hence Government’s assistance. He then added that treasury was working on a package to assist hard hit sectors such as the tourism sector.