Odisha CM Directs District Collectors To Ensure Livelihood To Poor Families

Bhubaneswar: Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Tuesday directed the district collectors to ensure that not a poor single family faces difficulty for lack of livelihood.

Reviewing the implementation of different livelihood schemes with the collectors through video-conferencing, the chief minister said poor people have been worst affected due to COVID-19 pandemic. The state government has accorded top priority to provide livelihood to them during the critical period since March, he added.

Stating that besides Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), the state government has taken several steps under different schemes to provide sources of income, Naveen said it is targeted to create 20 crore mandays in this financial year under MGNREGA and urban employment scheme.

He directed the collectors to enquire about payment of wages from beneficiaries regularly through Mo Sarkar platform and cautioned that any delay in this regard will be seriously taken note of.

The chief minister congratulated the collectors of Jajpur, Sonepur and Koraput for taking steps to achieve the MGNREGA target. He advised the collectors to focus on the districts which witness labour migration. He also told them to complete 1000 houses under Mission Shakti before March, 2021.

Chief secretary Asit Kumar Tripathy said different programmes have been taken up to provide livelihood sources to 50 lakh marginal and landless farmers.

Deoranjan Kumar Singh, principal secretary, Panchayatiraj department, G Mathivathanan, principal secretary, Housing and Urban Development department and VK Pandian, private secretary to chief minister (5T) also spoke in the meeting.

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