J&K decides to give Rs 25,000, cost of 5gm gold to BPL girls for marriage
The Jammu and Kashmir government has decided to provide marriage assistance fund to women from families below poverty line and skill development training to women unable to earn a livelihood. The state cabinet sanctioned adoption of the state sponsored ‘State Marriage Assistance Scheme for poor women, according to which prospective beneficiary above 18 years, would get a one-time financial assistance of Rs 25,000 and cost of 5gm gold from the government.
“Our priority is to address the problems of the poor,” said Bali Bhagat, minister for social welfare. As per the government statistics, 13.27 lakh people, around 10.35% of the total population of J&K, fall below the poverty line. The Cabinet also adopted another scheme ‘Hunnar’ which is for aimed at skill development of poor women who cannot find themselves in a position to earn livelihood.
Hunnar brings all skill development schemes of the government under one banner and facilitates BPL women to get exhaustive exposure to various training programmes. As per the guidelines, the prospective beneficiary should not be a school going girl and identified as BPL in government survey.
The scheme, government spokesperson said, includes skill development, micro enterprises, cooperative societies for the production, manufacturing of goods and marketing of products. The eligible girls will be imparted training through various existing schemes, extended by the identified departments, followed by subsidy, marketing and managerial support, once the venture will turn into cooperative society.
The scheme will be operational in all districts across the state and Social Welfare Department will be the nodal department for implementation of the scheme. The previous National Conference and Congress government had identified 3,75,000 girls for special marriage assistance scheme. However, only a few hundred could avail of the benefits in 2013-14 and the funds were lying unused due to the bureaucratic and legal hurdles.
