KARACHI - Jamaat-e-Islami chief Senator Siraj-ul-Haq on Sunday announced awarding 50 percent of the party’s parliamentary tickets to youth in the upcoming general elections to increase their representation in the elected houses across the country.

Sirajul Haq who is visiting Karachi to witness the second phase of the JI youth elections, told media at the JI Liaquatabad camp that they would hold a convention of the youth leadership on May 6 in Karachi, as the elections conclude, and will chalk out the future course of action.

He said that the youth makes 65 pc of Pakistan’s total population due to the prevailing situation, majority of them are thinking of moving out from the country while some of them had indulged in drugs, putting their future in dark.

He said that currently there are only two member National Assembly who are under 30, a figure far below as compared to other parts of the globe where there is a representation of 10 percent of youth for such platforms.

Citing examples of Shaheer Niazi, a 17-year-old A levels students who researched on electric honeycomb in 2017, and late Arfa Karim, who at the age of nine became the youngest Microsoft Certified Professional in 2004, the JI chief said that the country’s youth are highly talented.

He said that JI wanted to relive the libraries and laboratories in the country to produce people like Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan. “It is because of corrupt and incompetent rulers, the country lagged behind in the world,” he added.

He said that at a time when world was landing on Moon and Mars, 22 million of the country’s children were not even going to schools. He criticized the governments’ policies to put as low as 2.6 pc of the total budget on education while keeping a larger share just to maintain their VIP lifestyles.