As many as 100,000 laptops would be distributed to high achievers in the country, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced on Thursday as he revived the ‘PM’s Youth Program’—a flagship scheme of the PML-N under which free laptops and soft loans were given to the youth.

“Laptops will be distributed on merit, not on recommendation,” he said at the launching ceremony of PM’s Youth Loan Program on Thursday.

The PM’s Youth Laptop Scheme (Phase-III) was one of the six programmes approved by the Central Development Working Party at the cost of Rs0.146162 billion in its last meeting in December 2022.

“The criteria for the scheme is that those who have achieved high performance in their schools and colleges and those who have achieved an A-grade or high number because of their hard work despite the difficult financial conditions of their parents will get these laptops,” he said and reiterated that merit would be followed in this programme.

The premier went on to add that portable computers have become a source of employment for the youth in the country while responding to naysayers who alleged the PML-N government was giving “bribes” to the people when the PML-N launched it in 2013.

Pakistan is one of the top markets for freelancers, according to this report. He was hopeful that the number of laptops would be increased in the future.

“I am giving laptops to the youth, not Kalashnikov [rifle],” reiterated PM Shehbaz and reminded his critics that the same device was the source of education during the coronavirus pandemic.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, after coming into power in 2013, announced a development package worth Rs20 billion for the country’s youth comprising six projects, that included the above mentioned initiative.

The purpose of such a project was to bring the country’s youth at par with the modern world in which the economic landscape is growing with the technology and provide them an enabling environment to compete in the world, Special Assistant to the PM on Youth Affairs Shaza Fatima Khawaja said on December 14, 2022.

Fifty per cent of the laptops would be given to women, transgender persons would be added to it, and the Balochistan quota has been doubled, she added then.