Sharing of Village Plan Documents with Panchayat Bodies

On 24^th May 2011, Ekta’s People’s Empowerment to Access Rights for Livelihoods (PEARL) programme organised a meeting at Gadiaguda for village development committee members representing 24 villages from the Gram Panchayat. 61 people attended, and met with Abhinash Khora, the Gram Rozgar Sevok (GRS) for Gadiaguda. He is the appointed government worker who represented to the meeting. Besides that, 3 ward members of the Panchayat also participated in the meeting.

These 24 villages include 11 revenue villages and 13 hamlets. Prior to this meeting, each of the 11 revenue villages had prepared a Village Plan Document in their own villages with the participation & involvement of all villagers basing upon their various issues into consideration. The PEARL programme has facilitated villagers to prepare their own Village Development Plan. From these plans a shortlist of urgent problems was drawn up and sent to the Gram Panchayat through GRS.

These issues are:

• Availability of Below Poverty Line (BPL) Cards
• Availability of Job Cards
• Building of a cement-concrete road
• Access to electricity
• Education – Dumiriguda needs a school, while the GRS says that where there are schools 20% of students have dropped out
• Safe Drinking Water – They are demanding a new tube well as currently they are collecting drinking water from a nearby stream
• Old-age pensions
• Availability of sufficient medicines and other essential materials prior to the monsoon at villages
• Late payment of NREGA work
• Forest Land Rights
• Forestry planting on own land through MGNREGS. Crops desired are cashew and mangos
• Step-in bathing ghat – At the moment they are using the stream for bathing, and women in particular desire privacy.

At the meeting, the GRS announced that:

• If community members apply to Gram Panchayat, he will send job cards within 2 days.
  
• He will also send pensions to applicants within 2 months.
• Villagers can apply for Forestry planting on their own land by providing details of their proposed plantings, a copy of their voter ID card, and their land patta. The government will provide plants and payment.
• He assured the villagers that he would draw the attention of other line departments to the issues discussed in the meeting.