Acting on the commitment to stop migration from the hills to the plains, the State Government has signed a joint declaration with Tata Trust on Wednesday under which the trust has pledged to execute a string of schemes to better the standard of living.
The declaration was signed by Chief Secretary S Ramaswam and chief executive officer of Tata Trust V Ramaswami in the presence of Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat. Chief Secretary said a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) would soon follow the joint declaration.
The Chief Minister said they would warmly welcome all the initiatives to be taken for the betterment of the Uttarakhand. "I am exulted with the Tata Trust taking initiatives in this matter," he said.
"There is need to identify the clusters and implement the schemes in a planed way. let me request the trust to firm up plans for agriculture, horticulture, cottage industry, dairy and animal husbandry in sync with the environmental and geographical conditions of the State. Besides, we expect the trust to enhance skills of the targeted people through working on the skill development mission," he said.
He also assured that his Government would soon earmark land for housing a cancer hospital. "We hope that the trust would contribute to improving the transport infrastructure under a time-bound plan," the CM said.
As per the declaration, Tata would help 12,500 families living in five districts to earn at least Rs one lakh per annum through national rural livelihood mission (NRlM) in the next five years. Tata will open skill development centre one each in Pithoaragarh of Kumaon division and Chamoli of Garhwal division under strive project under the aegis of the skill development mission.
In these centres, the youth will be trained about hospitality, healthcare, automobile and other employment oriented trades too. Following the training, the youth would be able to earn their livelihood as skilled persons while most of them are working now as unskilled workers.
The State Government has identified buildings to be used to house the centres.
Besides, Tata Trust will establish a fully developed cancer care centre with the help of the State Government. Rural areas will be transformed as digital villages under which debit/credit cards would not be required for the villagers. All kinds of transaction would be made through banks which would be connected with the Aaadhaar numbers. Currently, they have been working on digicash at Kaleshwar of Chamoli district and Thano of Dehradun district. Here villagers are being apprised about the point of sell under Bheem- based app.
Tata has been imparting training of software skills to the science stream students under open ignite scheme. With this training students would be able to get jobs under Information Technology.
Among those present during the programme were Principal Secretary Manisha Panwar, Secretary to CM Radhika Jha and ex-FRDC Vibha Puri Das aside from the senior executives of Tata Trust.