STATE TIMES NEWS
JAMMU: Despite the government’s claims that it has launched many flagship schemes for development and welfare of the people, benefits have not trickled down and a major course correction is needed.
This was observed by former Minister and senior Congress leader, Raman Bhalla after visiting Langar village near Kunjwani in Gandhi Nagar Constituency as a part mass contact programme to mobilise public opinion to maintain peace, communal harmony and brotherhood to defeat nefarious designs of vested interests.
This meeting was organised by Congress Ward Committee of Langer. The prominent workers present on occasion include Satish Sharma, Kuldeep Chib, Amaranth, Satpaul, Vijay Sharma, Puran, Jamwal, Buti Ram, Gyan Chand, Mohinder, Tanvir along with Langar Welfare Committee.
Raising concern over Kashmir unrest and its negative impact on traders of Jammu region, Bhalla said that it will be difficult for them to recover from the losses they have suffered so far. They have been suffering a loss per day and it comes around several crores since the eruption of violent protests in Kashmir on 8th July, he said, adding that some relief measures need to be announced to save the industry and for this, the State Government should atleast defer the date of payment of term loans and electricity bills.
Ironically, the public representatives from Jammu, who won massive mandate and enjoyed support of traders lobby, are yet to utter a word or two on the quantum of losses incurred by the traders from Jammu region and what steps they are going to take to mitigate their sufferings, he said. Both Jammu and Kashmir regions are interlinked commercially to maintain the crucial supply chain but ever since Kashmir has been witnessing ‘mindless violence’ across different district quarters the traders from Jammu, based in Nehru Market Ware House are left with no other option but to count mounting losses, Bhalla added.
Despite the direction of Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Elevation to the State’s Housing and Urban Development Department to utilise the services of city level technical experts who were appointed under Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY) programme for the purpose of smooth and successful implementation of housing for all, nothing concrete has been done in this regard. The RAY programme which was introduced by United Progressive Alliance (UPA) at Centre in 2013 to provide affordable housing to those sections of the society who are economically poor, Bhalla added.
Bhalla said that several households in rural areas of State have no access to basic amenities like drinking water, sanitation and electricity and situation in urban areas is also far from reality what government time and again boosts.
Despite the hype about financial inclusion and extension of banking and credit to rural farmers, the proportion of rural households availing any banking services was marginable, he said adding that the efforts to expand rural physical infrastructure including water, electricity and sanitation have shown no results as sanitation remained state’s single biggest failure with a large proportion of the rural population still defecating in the open, and childhood malnutrition and ill health being rampant.
In view of the fact that three-fourth of our population is residing in rural area, there is a big rural-urban divide and rural areas continue to be characterized by poverty, low level of productivity and lack of basic minimum services resulting in unabated migration of population towards urban areas, Bhalla maintained.
Hitting out at the ruling PDP-BJP government in the State, Bhalla accused them of callousness in providing basic facilities to the people of Jammu region.
Instead of responding to grim situation, arising in the wake of ill-conceived policies of the coalition, and solving the problems of the people, the government has other priorities, he said.
