Officers Made Accountable For All Welfare Schemes- Ranike

Chandigarh, April 22, 2015: The Punjab Government today issued directions to divide the state into different zones to effectively implement the Shagun and Scholarship schemes upto village level. In a comprehensive plan to stream line the implimentation of welfare schemes for SCs constituting more than 32% population of the state, the department has decided to put all the zones under a Nodal Officer who would be accountable for failure if any in implementation of the schemes.

Disclosing this today, Gulzar Singh Ranike said that new implementations has been put into operation after thorough review of schemes and to stream line the delivery system of the schemes.

Giving the details he said that one zone each would be carved out as Majha and Doaba and two zones would be carved out of Malwa region. “Each zone would be supervised by a Nodal Officer, who would be accountable for the proper implementation of the Shagun and Scholarship schemes” said Ranike. He said that all the 22 districts would be covered under these four zones. He said that the officer of the department has been instructed to devise a comprehensive policy in this regard so that conceived policy could be rolled out at the earliest.

The Minister said that pursuing the direction of Parkash Singh Badal, Chief Minister, Punjab the department would soon initiated a consistent campaign to sensitize the public about the various SC welfare schemes. He said that series of seminars would also be conducted in the state and Seema Jain, Secretary, Welfare Department has been asked to prepare roadmap for the seminars.

Welfare Minister said that the appointment letters to 43 Tehsil Welfare Officer would be handed over soon. “We have got the nod of CM for the appointment of Litigation Officer and the recruitment would soon be made” he added. He said that with the appointment of Litigation Officer the cases of SC backlog in various departments would be cleared in stipulated timeframe besides checking of roaster registers and follow-up of court cases at faster pace.            

Prominent amongst other who were present during the meeting included Seema Jain, Secretary, Alkananda Dyal, Director, Sukhjitpal Singh, Joint Director of the Welfare Department.