Union Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi on Monday stressed the need for training and development of elected women representatives of Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs). She maintained that it would ensure that fruit of development reach up to the grassroots level through their active participation and actual empowerment.
Maneka was addressing the function at the inauguration of fifth Regional Centre of National Institute of Public Cooperation and Child Development (NIPCCD) at SAS Nagar (Mohali).
NIPCCD is a premier organisation devoted to promotion of voluntary action, research, training, and documentation in the overall domain of women and children development.
Earlier, there are four such Regional Centres one each at Bangalore, Guwahati, Indore and Lucknow besides the headquarters at New Delhi.
Taking a round of the newly built centre at Mohali, Maneka visited the Child Guidance Centre wherein on display were many playing tools or materials exclusively prepared by NIPCCD for preschool children.
She suggested that NIPCCD should start patenting the play materials developed and distribute the same at anganwadis who can use the material for preschool training.
She also informed that 1.40 lakh women are suffering from various types of problems and for helping them ‘One-Stop-Centres’ are being started in Punjab and Haryana.