Government gears up to provide livelihood opportunities to rural poor

Hyderabad: Rural Development Department of Telangana will take measures to improve livelihood opportunities for the people in rural areas through the Centre's NREG and other schemes.

This has been informed to the Centre through the action plan prepared for the present financial year. The Rural Development Department said the livelihood enhancement would be taken up by improving the rural infrastructure through creation of durable assets under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme.

It would utilize the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gramin Kaushal Yojana for skill enhancement. It would develop RURBAN clusters and would provide connectivity through Prime Minister Gramin Sadak Yojana to the villages.

The department would explore multiple sustainable livelihoods by improving the group finance and would focus on agriculture and allied activities to provide sustainable profitable livelihood opportunities for improving the lives of the rural people.

In the performance report submitted to the Centre, the Telangana Rural Development Department said a total of 41.23 lakh had been provided with 10.94 crore days of work in the 2018-19 (up to February – 2019) under NREG as part of its efforts to provide livelihood to the rural poor.

The department said a total of 1,833 crore had been spent through the NREG in the villages. Under Prime Minister Gramin Sadak Yojana about 157 km of roads had been laid to connect nine habitations.

It has set a target of laying 600 km of roads in this financial year to connect about 90 villages with a cost of Rs 400 crores. Through the National Social Assistance programme about 7.13 lakhs persons have been assisted with Rs 203 crores.

Through the DDU-KAY 13,657 persons have been trained and about 14,000 have been provided with placements. The persons who got placements include those trained in the previous financial year.

About 45 villages had been adopted by the MPs and out of them 35 had submitted the village development plans under the Prime Minister Sansad Adarsh Gramin Yojana, the performance report said.

In this financial year, the Centre would focus on timely payment of wages and pensions, improving grievance redressal mechanism in the Gram Panchayats, completion of 60 lakh houses, improving market connectivity and skill development and placements.

The State has been told to initiate aspiring district programme so that they could achieve more development than the state average. It has been told to focus on enhancing wage employment.

It was told to complete the works taken up to 2017-18 under various schemes and should reach the national average of 88 per cent in this regard. The Centre wanted the state to give importance to pay the wages on time under NREG.