NRO Dr Saheb Sahu from Mulbar village, Bhtali block, Bargarh , now settled in USA, has urged Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik to take a few steps to eliminate poverty of the State. He has written a letter to the CM in this regard.
He suggested that the Government of Odisha should implement Bolsa familia type of direct cash transfer programme followed in Brazil. "According to 2011 census, Odisha had 13.6 million poor people. If we assume four persons living per household, the number of poor households will be (13.4/4=3.4) 3.4 millions. If the Government gives a direct cash grant of Rs15, 000 per year per family, the annual cost to the Government will be about `5,100 crore. The amount will be about 12 per cent of Odisha's 2016-17 Budget of `44,265 crore. The Government of Odisha can seek some special grant from the Center and /or suspend some existing poverty reduction schemes to find the money," he said.
He also suggested encouraging migration of job seeking youths and giving onetime cash grant of `15,000 or Rs 20,000 to each migrating family to defer the cost of migration. He also suggested providing schooling for the children of the migrants.
He said that the Government should provide health insurance, disability and life insurance for them and help Odias to migrate to the Gulf States in large numbers.
He also asked to provide breakfast along with the midday meals to all children up to middle school to attract more and more children to schools, improve school's infrastructure, including toilets, play ground and hostels, hire more female teachers and improve the quality of education by decreasing teachers' absentee rate, and students' dropout rate and conditional cash transfer to mothers for their children's school attendance and immunization.
last but not the least, he urged the Odisha Government to put emphasis on preventive healthcare rather than acute care and spend most of the health budget on preventive care, besides supplying safe drinking water to all, health insurance, creating a cadre of village health workers , improving infrastructure of all the Government hospitals and transferring their control to the local board of trustees to run them.