A meeting of elected village local body representatives was organised at the collectorate as per the instruction of rural development ministry of Jharkhand government. DC Mukesh Kumar presided the meeting in which detailed discussion took place on MNREGA.
Kumar informed the participants that district administration has already approved 7198 proposals of construction of small ponds which have to be built by June 15, 2016. The state government has given a target of construction of 11,717 ponds in the district so that more and more rainwater can be stored. These small ponds are to be built in an area of less than 30x30 ft. and the beneficiaries can use machines too. The machine owners can contact district land surveillance department.
Big ponds are to be built by Gram Sabha and MNREGA workers will be engaged in this job. He also informed that on Friday the block development officers and their representatives are going to organize Gram Sabhas in different panchayats and in these meetings proposals of construction of small ponds can be discussed and cleared, added DC Mukesh Kumar.
During the discussion it became clear that the number of job card holders is decreasing in the district and some job card holders are yet unaware about the process of demanding job. It was decided that under Yojna Banao Abhiyan those families and persons will also be identified who do not have job cards yet. It was informed in the meeting that 55% job card holders have demanded job so far.
District board chairperson Sushila Devi advocated the need of increasing the number of active workers in every panchayat and the number of active job card holders also. She demanded to start a special campaign for it so that atleast 100 active workers can be added in every panchayat of the district.
The village local body representatives present in this meeting agreed with the district administration that the crisis of water can be solved only by making CM’s ambitious plan “Gaon ka Paani, Gaon me” successful and by construction of series of small ponds it can be done. Everyone accepted that deep boring is not a permanent solution of the problem because the underground water level is going down and down every year. Ponds will also help in raising the underground water level up.