NREG provides employment to 34.08 lakh families in MP

Indore, Madhya Pradesh, Feb 17: The National Rural Employment Guarantee (NREG) scheme has provided employment to 34.08 lakh families so far at a cost of Rs 1737.24 crore in different districts of Madhya Pradesh.

The officials supervising the work of NREG in various districts told a group of visiting journalists that under the programme, the state had received Rs 2,591.16 crore so far and 1,667.33 lakh mandays of employment had been generated.

Altogether, 57,450 works have been completed under the scheme, while 1,42,705 works were under progress. At present the scheme was being implemented in 31 districts of the state.

Ms Sonali Dhund, Panchayat Pradhan of Ali Gram Panchayat in Dhar, said since March 2005, 274 families received job cards while persons belonging to 180 families were employed in different projects.

However, Ramesh, a labourer under the Panchayat, when asked to comment on the scheme, said, ''All of us should get 100 days of work.

Out of 180 families only 30 families got cent per cent work and efforts should be made to arrange cent per cent work for all the remaining 150 families.'' The officials, entrusted with the work of implementing the various aspects of Sarva Siksha Abhiyaan (SSA) in the state, told the visiting journalists that free distribution of books to all students from Class I to Class VIII, uniforms to girl students and bicycles to girl students, who did not have secondary schools in their area, are the salient features of the scheme being implemented in the districts, besides the mid-day meal programme.

According to Assistant Project Coordinator (Dhar district) Pravin Sharma, the dropout rate declined by 50 per cent in Dhar where male and female literacy rates are 52 per cent and 31 per cent respectively and majority of the population belongs to the Scheduled Tribes, including Bhils.

He said 3,521 girl students in the district were the beneficiary of bycycles as they had to go to schools beyond their locality.

'' We are committed to make SSA a success and are leaving no stone unturned to spread education among all strata of the society,'' Mr Sharma observed.

Besides the SSA and NREG, a special plan had been undertaken under the National Rural Health Mission(NRHM) to provide effective healthcare to the rural population in the state with special focus on sanitation.

Under the total sanitation programme, 15,96,191 latrines had been constructed so far across various districts.

UNI