Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has said that all the women self-help groups of the State should be financially empowered. For this, the concerned departments should create roadmaps, fix priorities and set a time-bound schedule.
Chouhan was chairing a meeting on economic empowerment of women self-help groups at Mantralaya on Wednesday.
Chief Secretary Iqbal Singh Bains, Additional Chief Secretary Manoj Shrivastava, Principal Secretary Labour Ashok Shah, Principal Secretary Deepali Rastogi and others were present in the meeting.
Chouhan said that inactive groups in the state should be activated and their bank linkage should be created. Shri Manoj Shrivastava informed that at present, bank accounts of 71 thousand groups have not been opened and 22707 groups are inactive. There is a target of the formation of 2 lakh 10 thousand women self-help groups in the state.
He said that in order to strengthen self-help groups in the state and make them more active in various activities, whatever better is happening in the country and in the world should be applied to the state.
The Chief Minister said that our aim is to increase the income of our self-help groups and empower them financially. For this, an action plan should be made and implemented soon.
On the outstanding work being done by the self-help groups in the state, Manoj Shrivastava said that the groups are prominently engaged in cluster-based spice crop and vegetable production, advanced agriculture - use of organic manure and organic pesticides, vegetable production through scaffolding technique, marketing of group produced vegetables through Livelihood Fresh, milk value chain work in collaboration with NDDB dairy services (milk production up to 18 thousand litres per day by 19,876 beneficiaries in Sagar,
Rajgarh, Agar,), take home ration in 5 plants, training to women groups in other states -Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab by Krishi Sakhis (income of Rs 2.95 crores by 724 Sakhis) Community Training centres operated by the community, Primary Rural Entrepreneurship Programme (awarded thrice by Government of India) run outstandingly in 13 districts.
Chouhan directed that proper arrangements should be made for marketing of goods prepared by women self-help groups in the state and outside so that they can avail good profit.
Principal Secretary Ashok Shah informed that excellent work has been done by Tejaswini women’s groups in the field of manufacturing Kodo Kutki commodities, milk collection, different types of food items production etc. He urged that the Tejaswini women self-help groups should be allowed to operate like before without transferring them to Livelihood Mission which was immediately approved by the Chief Minister.