Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Aug 28: Former Minister and senior Congress leader Raman Bhalla has said that despite the Government’s claims that it has launched many flagship schemes for development and welfare of people, the benefits have not trickled down to the ground level.
Addressing public gathering at Langar village near Kunjwani in Gandhi Nagar constituency as a part mass contact programme today, Mr Bhalla asked the people to maintain peace, communal harmony and brotherhood to defeat nefarious designs of vested interests.
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. Some relief measures need to be announced to save the industry and for this, the State Government should at least defer the date of payment of term loans and electricity bills.
He said despite the direction of Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Elevation to the State’s Housing and Urban Development Department to utilize 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.
Commenting on health scenario, Bhalla said that despite the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), rural healthcare suffers from the lack of qualified personnel at every level from paramedics to doctors and specialists and requires greater investment in physical infrastructure too. With inadequate basic health facilities, hundreds of precious lives are lost every year in State. The Government’s efforts to provide basic facilities to the people have failed to yield results.
Bhalla said the Government even failed to adopt the concept of developing “Model Villages” for over all development of the rural areas. The idea was not only to provide basic services in rural areas to check migration of population and improve quality of life to demonstrate the use of latest technology and ensure integrated development of these areas. He said pesky power outage and acute drinking water shortage is unprecedented, which speaks of callousness of the Government towards residents.
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