NCC activities in Punjab suffer due to fund shortage: Minister

Chandigarh, Oct 23 (UNI) Punjab Education Minister Upinderjit Kaur today said the NCC activities in the state were suffering due to shortage of funds and assured that she would take up this matter with the chief minister.

Presiding over the third meeting of the State Advisory Committee meeting of NCC here, she observed that NCC activities needed to be strengthened in the state so as to create human resource of organised, trained and motivated youth besides building their character morally and physically.

She agreed that the NCC training schedule had been hampered because of the big gap between the demand and the allocation of the funds meant for the NCC activities. She also said the matter regarding the revised allocation of the budget for state NCC group would be taken up with the chief minister and the finance minister.

She has also assured the NCC officers of providing adequate infrastructure like computers and other related set-up for the unit offices.

Taking part in the deliberations, Brig Rajinder Singh, Deputy Director General NCC said at present there are 29 units of NCC managing 562 institutes all over the state. He urged the state government to enhance the budgetary allocations for NCC cadets so that the youth should not suffer because of the financial crunch. He regretted that Punjab was lagging behind the other states in NCC training.

Col KJ Singh Cdr, NCC group and Coordinator for NCC in Punjab gave a detailed presentation of the NCC units and their activities all over the state. He said 48,000 cadets had been enrolled for imparting training through NCC units.

As far as the NCC complexes were concerned, the NCC Directorate had asked the state government to construct four NCC housing units at Patiala, Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Amritsar. Each complex required three to four acres of land.

The government has asked the deputy commissioners to identify the required land and it was observed in the meeting that if these complexes came into being then the government could save a huge amount which was being spent on rents annually. It could also give impetus to NCC training besides accelerating co-ordination between NCC units.

Mrs Anjali Bhawra, Secretary higher education, Mr Ashok Kumar, ADPI Colleges besides other senior officers of the education and finance departments, principals of a few government colleges attended the meeting.

UNI HS ARB SB HT1807