The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Separate welfare boards for STs, De-notified Tribes on cards

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Apr 19, 2007
ePaper

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Separate welfare boards for STs, De-notified Tribes on cards

Special Correspondent

The idea is to improve their socio-economic condition

CHENNAI: The State Government will set up separate welfare boards for Scheduled Tribes and De-notified Tribes.

Replying to a debate on the demands of her Ministry, Adi Davidar and Tribal Welfare Minister A. Tamilarasi told the Assembly on Wednesday that the idea was to improve socio-economic and educational condition of the communities, who were entitled to all benefits and concessions given to members of other welfare boards.

The Minister claimed that it was the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam Government that introduced one per cent reservation for the STs and formed a department exclusively for them.

She announced a number of concessions for students belonging to the Adi Dravidar Community. The Department would expand Adi Dravidar hostels to create 1000 more slots, besides constructing 25 new hostels for accommodating 1,250 students.

At present 190 of the 1,215 Adi Dravidar hostels functioned from rented buildings. In the current year, new buildings would be constructed for 25 hostels. From the current year, the monthly food allowance of school students would be increased to Rs. 400 from Rs. 300 and for college students to Rs. 500 from Rs. 400.

Training programmes

To provide more employment opportunities for Dalit/tribal youth, the Department, in coordination with the Tamilnadu Adi Dravidar Housing and Development Corporation (TAHDCO), was offering employment-oriented training.

Last year, the Department trained 100 girls for airhostess course and this year another 100 girls would be given training. Similarly 100 boys would be trained to become airline cabin crew in the current year.

Training programmes were also conducted for students of the National Institute of Fashion Technology, Apparel Training Design Centre, Central Institute of Plastic Engineering Technology and Central Food Wear Training Institute. Interested students could make use of the facility.

To enable students to improve their English speaking skills, about 5000 students would be given training at a cost of Rs. 2 crore. Five hundred students would be trained to take up jobs in BPOs/call centres and another 500 in medical transcription.

The department would select 10 SC/ST students of Government, Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare Schools in each district who had secured the highest marks and put them in the best higher secondary schools in the State to enable them to score high marks in the Plus-Two examinations. It would bear the school and hostel fees and had allotted Rs. 84 lakh for the purpose.

During the current year, economic development schemes worth Rs. 253 crore would be implemented through TAHDCO to benefit 2.25 lakh youths in the State, she added.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Tamil Nadu