The Gajapati district administration has launched the Women Support Centre programme on August 25 to prioritise land allocation to landless single women and to help them access various Government schemes and programmes so that they can improve their lives.
The highlight of the event was a signature campaign for the ‘Need to identify all single women in the district and help them getting their land rights and benefit from all the State programmes’.
As many as 150 Government officials, including the district Collector, the Zilla Parishad President, district heads of all line departments, tehsildars, Block Development Officers, the PRI members and members of landesa , a global non-profit organization working for securing land rights of the poorest people and women, campaigned for the cause.
“landesa is providing technical support in designing and implementation of the Women Support Centre programme. The programme will identify all ‘single women’ in the villages, particularly the widowed, abandoned, divorced, 30 plus never married women, women with physical disability, and women whose husband is unable to earn due to disability or chronic fatal disease. The Women Support Centres at the Tehsil offices will process the cases of landless single-women for their land rights. likewise, the centre at the Block offices will help the identified women benefit from various Government social security and livelihood programmes and schemes,” said Gajapati district Collector Sudhanshu Mohan Samal.
Gajapati is the 5th district to start the Women Support Centre programme besides Ganjam, Mayurbhanj, Koraput and Kalahandi districts that have been implementing the programme with support from landesa.