A pre-Budget citizenry consultation was organised by OBAC-CYSD here on Friday, where academicians, researchers and officials from Finance and Planning and Convergence Department participated.
The bottom line was ‘Efficiency and accountability in spending of the resources: Key to address the last mile issue.” The discussion focused on health, education, water sanitation, ST/SC development, agriculture and livelihood, food and nutrition security and gender.
In order to improve the public health services in rural area, it is essential to have adequate number of mobile health centres. There is a dearth of basic facilities like electricity in 22 per cent primary health centres (PHCs), and 39 per cent sub-centres. Besides, vacancy of paramedical staff also undermines the effective delivery of health services. There is also the need to improve the availability and accessibility of referral transport services and increasing the number of beds in the Government hospitals for addressing the growing dependency of the poor patients, opined the participants.
There was also a suggestion to have customised toilets for the differently able individuals and special incentives for the toilets for the disaster prone areas. Besides, in order to improve the quality of teaching and learning achievement of the students, emphasis was given on a robust school monitoring both for students and teachers. For the effective delivery of the services at anganwadi centres (AWCs), filling up of vacant posts and construction of pucca building was also emphasized.
Finance Principal Secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey emphasized on the efficient and accountable spending of the resources.
It was emphasized that the State has to develop a tribal development policy with a clear State level tribal sub-plan by fixing the accountability for planning and budgeting at all levels. For effective utilisation of the resources, a suggestion was to given to bring an act on SCSP and TSP on lines of Andhra Pradesh. It was also suggested that all the minor forest produce should be provided the minimum support price.
For addressing the malnutrition issues in the State, it was suggested to devise a nutrition policy with a nutrition directorate to spearhead the nutrition mission and convergence among the drivers like Women and Child Development, Health and Family Welfare, Agriculture, Food and Consumer Welfare departments. Even it was suggested to institutionalize nutrition budgeting to reprioritize the budget for nutrition specific and nutrition sensitive interventions. In tribal area, nutrition sensitive agriculture should be promoted after identifying the causes of malnutrition.
Among others, former Finance Minister Panchana Kanungo, former Information Commissioner Jagadananda, chairman of 3rd State Finance Commission Prof Sudhakar Panda, GM University VC Prof Sudhansu Rath, Prof Bhagabata Patra from Berhampur University, besides officials of Finance Department were present.