JAMMU: In a significant development towards strengthening of panchayats and ensuring proper interface between various departments and panchayats, the Department of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj constituted five functional committees at Panchayat level viz committee for natural resources management, human resources, employment generation, finance and works .
The committee for natural resources management, inter alia, is tasked to conserve surface and ground water and prevent overflowing of useful water into drains, manage water works, undertake water conservation measures, prevention of encroachment of tank bed land, and protection of forest.
The committee will be headed by the concerned sarpanch as its chairman and will also have a forest guard, representative of PHE department, Integrated Watershed Management Programme, Rehbar-e-Zarat as its members.
Among the committees is a functional committee on human resources that will propagate the importance of being literate and organise literacy drives, ensure that all children in the age group of 6 -14 are compulsorily enrolled in school, educate people to prevent diseases by following protective health care programmes.
The committee will have a teacher, Accredited Social Health Activist worker, Female Multipurpose Health Worker, SHG member, aganwadi worker, Panch as its members while Secretary Panchayat will serve as its Member Secretary.
The committee for employment generation and self help groups will facilitate collection and processing of data relating to the unemployed and their employment needs, maintaining lists of manual labour of the village, create awareness among the people about the availability wage employment schemes, promotion of handicrafts and village cottage industries and organise marketing of the products of the village artisans at remunerative prices.
The committee will have a representative of the labour department, Handicraft department, Umeed, SHG member and Panch as its members.
The committee for finance and planning is mandated to ensure that all the fees are comprehensively assessed, levied and collected, prepare halqa panchayat vision document, prepare annual and 5-year Halqa Panchayat Development Plans (GPDP).
The members of the committee include Junior Agriculture Extension Officer, Junior Engineers, ASHA, Anganwadi worker, teacher, Horticulture technician, accounts assistant and panch.
The committee for works and infrastructure will prepare village data inventory on available physical infrastructure, natural resources and economic potential etc. The committee will have a Junior Engineer, ASHA, Anganwadi worker and all panches of the panchayat as its members. Each committee will be headed by the Sarpanch concerned and is supposed to meet at least once every month.
Secretary, RD & PR Sheetal Nanda emphasised that the committees would not only contribute to the overall development of the panchayat but would also ensure frequent interaction between Sarpanches, Panches and functionaries of various departments leading to more information dissemination about various government schemes in the panchayat adding that it would also led to better coordination between panchayats and government departments for effective grass root planning.
