To provide services to general public in hassle-free manner, Punjab Welfare Department has in principal decided to bring all its departments, boards and corporations under one roof.
“The offices, corporations etc, relating to the Welfare Department, are working from various locations due to which general public has to face hurdle and inconvenience to get their work done and to avail the welfare services. To redeem this problem, the department has decided to provide a single window facility to the common man,” said the State Welfare Minister Gulzar Singh Ranike.
He said that all the branches of Department would now be converged into ‘Welfare Bhawan’ which would be constructed with the cost of Rs22 crore. “This Bhawan would be set up over one acre land allotted by PUDA at Sahibzada Ajit Singh Nagar,” he said adding that a request has been made to the Central Minister to provide special financial assistance to the extent of 50 per cent of the proposed cost.
Ranike said that for the benefit of SC students residing in border districts and remote areas of the State, the department has forwarded a proposal for the setting up a Centre on similar lines of Ambedkar Institute of Career and Courses, SAS Nagar. For the year 2014-15, out of the budgetary provision of Rs549.29 crore for centrally sponsored schemes, a sum of Rs310 crore has been utilised, he said. Apart from this, a sum of Rs440 crore is likely to be spent on the scheme of Post Matric Scholarship to SC during the year 2014-15.