Proposal to cover all NE districts under NREGP

Aizawl, Feb 15: The Ministry of Rural Development has proposed the Planning Commission to cover all districts of North-East states under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (NREGP).

According to the proposal, altogether 90 districts of 10 special category states, including NE region, will be coming under the scheme.

Planning department officials here today said NE state governments had earlier proposed Planning Commission to cover all the districts with special emphasis on asset creation in rural areas and employment generation as well as initiate special programmes on the pattern of Reconstruction Plan 2004-2007.

NREGA is implemented in 16 districts of eight NE states where the number of rural households were identified 10,65,007 and number of BPL families were 4,26,427, officials stated.

They disclosed altogether 9,42,385 job cards have been issued in NE region against which 6,62,700 households have demanded employment and 5,96,336 households have already been provided employment.

About 89 per cent of the rural households have been provided job cards in NE while national average is only 64 per cent, officials added.

Meanwhile, Planning Commission appreciated NE states except Manipur for successful implementation of various rural development schemes while a few insurgency-affected districts in Asom, Nagaland, Manipur, Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh have also been hit.

UNI