Woman and Child Development Minister Maya Singh has said that a roadmap for women’s empowerment for the year 2016 will be prepared. A meeting of the Board of Directors of Madhya Pradesh Women’s Finance and Development Corporation chaired by Singh endorsed the corporation’s activities for year 2015-16. The Principal Secretary, Women and Child Development JN Kansotiya and corporation’s MD Kalpana Shrivastava were present at the meeting.
Singh said that a clear mention of women being benefited though gender budget should be made in budgets of departments. She said that a separate budget for women is being fixed in 25 departments at the initiative of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. Madhya Pradesh is the first State to present gender budget in Vidhan Sabha. Its impact should be clearly visible and an assured process should be adopted for it.
Singh also directed to ensure active role of district collectors and public representatives in the action plan chalked out for 10 districts with less gender ratio under Swagatam laxmi Yojana. She asked for better packaging and branding of products of women’s self-help groups, especially kodo-kutki to help them get better prices in market.
MD Kalpana Shrivastava informed about activities of the corporation to be undertaken during year 2015-16. She informed that 7,500 new self-help groups would be formed this year. Training would be imparted to 780 office-bearers of federation of women’s self-help groups for better discharge of duties. Training would also be imparted to 26 thousand 100 Shaurya Dal members to bring about health awareness among women. Coordination will be made with concerning departments so that rural women covered under Tejaswini programme can get clean drinking water. Proposal for 600 cluster-bases livelihoods should be sanctioned and implemented and MIS should be established for tele-software for women, she added.