Tamil Nadu   

Centre to release 2 lakh tonnes of rice to Andhra

Special Correspondent

The State had sought creation of jobs in drought-hit districts

NEW DELHI: The Centre on Tuesday agreed to release 2 lakh tonnes of rice under the Sampoorna Gram Rojgar Yojana to Andhra Pradesh following a request from the State Government to create wage employment opportunities in drought-hit districts.

This was conveyed to the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, when he called on the Union Agriculture Minister, Sharad Pawar. Dr. Reddy during his meeting with the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, urged the Centre to release at least 5 lakh metric tonnes.

He said due to lack of normal rain during the monsoon, most of the districts in the coastal areas and a number of them in Rayalseema and Telangana were reeling under the impact of severe drought.

In addition, the State sought Rs. 250000 crores for irrigating of 20.27 lakh acres of ayacut under the Pranahita Chevella Project, Inchampalli and Dummugude-NS tail pond link. The projects were designed to develop the backward areas of the State. Under the recently passed National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, Andhra Pradesh requested that seven more districts be included to the eight that were already selected by the Centre. These were Medak, Karimnagar, Nizamabad, Kurnool, Chittoor, Nellore and Prakasam.

Dr. Reddy also said the State Government proposed to seek Rs.800-crore assistance from the Department for International Development to carry out health sector reforms over the next five years and requested Dr. Singh to direct the Ministry of Health and Department of Economic Affairs to accord approval to the proposal. The new programme of health sector reforms would focus on identifying gaps in the implementation of the existing programmes, improve efficiency of the system and involve community and civil society as active partners.

The primary aim would be improving child and maternity health care, increasing institutional deliveries, making motherhood safe, ensuring survival and promoting growth of children. The second set of goals would relate to addressing growing pandemic of HIV/AIDS while the third set would be to reduce the disease burden, especially tuberculosis, malaria, dengue, gastroenteritis and Japanese encephalitis.

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