The State Cabinet has come out in a big way to encourage budding athletes of Jharkhand as it approved huge monetary rewards on Tuesday for sportspersons bringing fame to Jharkhand at all major national and international sporting events. The encouragement will be in the form of attractive monetary reward for sportsmen representing Jharkhand and winning medals at the sporting events, including the Olympic Games.
The decision forms the part of 19 proposals approved by the Cabinet on Tuesday. According to the decision, athletes winning Gold, Silver and Bronze medals at Olympic Games will be given Rs 2-crore, Rs 1-crore and Rs 75-lakh correspondingly.
Cash rewards of Rs 25,00000, Rs 20,0000 and Rs 15,00,000 have also been declared for grabbing first three positions respectively at Youth Olympiad, Winter Olympic, World Cup, Commonwealth Games, intercontinental championship, South Asian Federation games, Asian Games, National Games, and World Marathon. A similar reward structure for trainers of the best performing athletes has also been approved by the Cabinet.
“A recommendation committee has been constituted to scrutinize applications in a transparent manner to award the monetary compensation. It will be headed by the Secretary, Arts, Sports, Culture and Youth Affairs. Director Sports will be Member Secretary, Director Secondary Education, Executive Jharkhand Sports Authority, Deputy Director, Sports and Deputy Director, Welfare will be other members of the committee,” said Additional Chief Secretary, Cabinet Coordination, NN Pandey.
The committee will also include representatives of department of Finance, Jharkhand Olympic Association, two recipients of Arjuna Awards besides, three national and international players.
The Cabinet also paved way for the consortium of Oil & Natural Gas Corporation limited and Indian Oil Corporation to begin petroleum mining work in Coal Bed Methane blocks of Bokaro and Ramgarh. The consortium has been given lease of 75 sqkm—59 sqkm in Bokaro and 16 sqkm in Ramgarh-- of the CBM block in the two districts for petroleum mining.
State is likely to reap the benefits of rich flora and fauna as the government decided to segregate tourist places into four categories by approving Jharkhand Tourism Development and Registration Act-2015.
To put Jharkhand on globe trotters’ itinerary, the government has decided to segregate tourist places into four categories for better development and better execution of tourism projects. With the approval of the Act, tourist places have been classified as Class A, Class B, Class C and Class D for international, national, state level and district level places significant from tourism viewpoint.
The government has formed a committee to identify tourist places for different categories which will be headed by Secretary, Tourism and would include PCCF, Jharkhand, Director, Sports and Culture, MD JTDC, Chief Engineer and Director, Directorate of Tourism as other members of the panel.
A State Tourism Promotion Committee will set development priorities for next financial year and the task is likely to take off from the month of September.
The State government also sanctioned amendment to State Drug Policy-2004 and made it incumbent upon the government doctors to recommend generic medicines to outdoor and indoor patients besides, providing free medicines mentioned in the Essential Drug list to those patients at all government hospitals.
Significantly, Chief Minister Raghubar Das fulfilled his promise of providing extra compensation to the victims of natural calamity in Godda district. The monetary compensation announced by the CM is more than the relief compensation fixed by the central government. The State government sanctioned the surplus amount (Rs1.54 crore) which will be paid from the state’s treasury. Notably the CM had visited Godda on April 4 to take stock of the situation in the district after it was hit badly by heavy rain and hailstorm.