STATE TIMES NEWS
KATHUA: District Administration, Kathua, launched Swabhiman (Strategy for Women Advancement and Betterment with Holistic Improvement Mission Aimed at National Development) an initiative for improving child sex ratio, gender ratio and raising the standards of girl child education in district under a special mission.
More than 40 departments and organisations have been roped in for special interventions aimed at improvements in gender ratio and education. The scheme was launched by District Development Commissioner Dr Shahid Iqbal Choudhary in presence of district officers from line departments. The first of its kind initative in State has a two year target to surpass national average of child sex ratio, gender ratio and girl education standards
Earlier, a survey carried out by district administration revealed alarmingly low gender ration in various villages and urban wards. Out of 576 villages and wards as many as 246 units were found to be having dismal gender ratio ranging between 330 to 890 which is far below the district average and overall district average found to be 50 points below national gender average of 940. Concerned over the dangerous trend the district administration devised an inter-sectoral plan under convergence for covering more than 1,15,00 household in a period of four months and reaching out through 1,530 schools and 245 Panchayats. Under SWABHIMAN, 700 different committees have been constituted for tracking the child birth, school dropout, and gender balance.
Departments of Social Welfare, Health, Rural Development, Revenue, ULBs, ICDS, Education, NYK, Information, Panchayats, DRDA, DRCS, Industries, Employment, Finance, Elections, Animal Husbandry, CAPD, Statistics and Evaluation, Posts, Planning and Development, District e-Governance Society and other sectors, projects and departments have been entrusted with specific objectives of awareness generation, information communication, vigilance, monitoring, capacity building and legal enforcement at unit level.
The DDC rolled out the scheme Swabhiman with department specific objectives and targets which shall be reviewed on a monthly basis. The district is initiating around 50 different campaigns for improving child sex ratio, gender ratio and encouraging quality improvement in girl child education as well as re-admission of school dropout girls. The scheme is based on a grid of 2,200 different unit teams and institutions across the district.
ADDC Prasanna Ramaswamy, ACD Tilak Raj, CEO Thoru Ram, CMO Dr Sangra, PO ICDS, BDOs, CDPOs, Tehsildars, Coordinator NYK and other officers attended the meeting convened for launch of Swabhiman.