By Binta Jaiteh
In 2020, life become tougher for the youths as Covid-19 seriously affected their jobs and lifestyles. Since the emerged of Coronavirus pandemic in the country it has caused a lot of unemployment, devastation, stress and theft among the youths. The Coronavirus pandemic became a daily discussion among youths who are calling on government for assistance.
Dilating on impact of the pandemic on youths, Allagie Jarju executive director of National Youth Council expressed his concern over difficulties facing in term of implementing activities during the emerged of Covid-19 in the country, especially in the aspect of funding.
According to him, as the pandemic continues, it was difficult to operate like previous years as government also have to spend a lot of fund in the relief package.
“Our partners had to divert some of the fund in order to assist the government at this moment.”
Meanwhile, youths faced lot of irregularities as caused by Ccovid-19, notable among them is the educational program which was stopped and delayed and start online classes. As the pandemic continued, the school timetable is adjusted “while students’ classes are also adjusted as they go to school alternatively, that alone is a disaster.”
Also, it is not all students that were able to access the online classes due to some obvious reasons such as inadequate electricity, lack of devices to use and also exams were delayed, too.
During the year under review, he said National Youth Council could not offer any help to the youths “because we are equally affected financially which made it difficult for the council to assist, but we engaged more on sensitizing the youths on preventive measures against Covid-19 as issued by WHO and Health Ministry.”
However, in this 2021 “we intend to conduct a brief study on how Covid-19 has impacted on youths while the entrepreneurs among them will work with our partners, to provide relief support.”
Ushering in the New Year, the NYC executive director urged youths to continue observe the Covid-19 guidelines to avoid the second wave like it is happening in other countries.
Abubacarr Daffeh, program manager of National Enterprise Development Initiative (NEDI) said Covid-19 affected everyone without any boundary.
To alleviate difficulties of youths as caused by Covid-19, Abubacarr Daffeh, program manager of the National Enterprise Development Initiative (NEDI) disclosed that measure is been put in place finance system that youths and entrepreneurs will be able to access.
“The youths revolving fund which financed by the Government is one of such thing that NEDI and SDF is implementing to ensure youths have access to finance,” he disclosed.
Among other plans to ease the youths’ difficulties he said “also working with our partners like GIZ to implement customized business advisory service for 60 of our existing entrepreneurs across the country as post Covid-19 recovery mechanism.’’
Although, he said, business viability cannot be certain in the wake of Covid-19 but “we are very much aware that there might be a second wave of Covid-19.”
However, NEDI will continue to work with relevant partners to mitigate the effect of Covid-19 for youths through facilitating access to finance and advisory service.
Obviously, Daffeh said Covid-19 has impacted greatly on their issues because it has caused a lot of disruption to their small business.