KARACHI - Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah while highlighting the initiatives, which will be taken in the current year, said that government would fill around 50,000 vacant jobs and create 8,000 new jobs in police department. In his budget speech CM Shah, outlined the development schemes and major initiatives which to be implemented in the upcoming fiscal 2008-09. Highlighting the list of major initiatives CM said, on short term basis we plan to put in place a mechanism where we want to reduce poverty through providing some financial support and at the same time, we want to develop skills for our Youth to get them employment. He further said, on a medium term basis we would concentrate on encouraging investment and growth especially in small and medium scale industry, raise agricultural productivity, attract investment in mineral sector and create environment for improving service industry in varying ways. Announcing the employment situation in Sindh he observed that although employment in the public sector will not be able to overcome chronic unemployment in Sindh, and the answer lies in expanding our manufacturing and services sectors in the private sector. However, this problem has been compounded by not filling significant number of vacancies in the past decade or so in the government. "There are approximately 5O, OOO posts vacant in different departments and we are creating nearly 8,000 new jobs in Police, and other departments in 2008-09. The Government has already begun the process of filling these vacancies which will be speeded up after the budget," Shah added. Under Poverty Reduction & Skill development Measures government are initiating a massive skill development program called, "Benazir Bhutto Shaheed Youth Development Program" in next fiscal. This is an urgent relief measure for skill Development of poor semi -literate and educated youth in Sindh for enhancing their employability, he said. "We plan to train more than 100,000 youth within two years in fields linked to market demand, both local and international," CM added. CM announced that under Benazir programme training of 61,000 youth have been finalised. Under this while over 40,000 matriculates and below will be trained in construction and industrial skills for 3 to 12 months and then linked to job market. Approximately 8000 youth will be trained in Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries extension and other trades, and 3800 youth will be trained as paramedics and in midwife courses. He announced that around 4000 youth will be trained in IT. "We in contact with private sector for facilitating training in Textiles, Garments', automobiles etc, in this context projects costing Rs. 4 billion have been finalised and Rs. 2.9 billion has been allocated in ADP. Government would seek assistance from Federal government as well," he said. A third major intervention will be providing Housing to the Poor. This will be our key towards ushering social transformation in Sindh. Federal Govt has announced construction of 1 million houses for the poor and retired government employees. Govt of Sindh has evolved its own program and under this we will provide 100,000 houses within two to three years, Qaim said. A dedicated unit called, "Peoples Housing Cell" has been created under a Special Assistant to the Chief Minister for spearheading this exercise, for facilitating speedy decisions, a high powered Steering Committee is being notified under the Chief Minister having members from institutions like ABAD. Distribution of state land to land less harees was other important announcement of budget. Revenue Department has provided details of 2,12,864 acres of land in different districts' and of this 1, 36,784 acres is Barrage land, which can be distributed among the poor landless harees of the same Taluka/Deh. "We are evolving a support package which will include micro finance, subsidised agricultural inputs, etc. Under above program, preference will be given to provision of land to a Female Members of the Landless Harees," CM Qaim Ali Shah said.