Residents of city interiors raise demands, pin high hopes on this maiden prog

Srinagar: After the sucess of recently held ‘Back to Village’ programme the LG administration announced two day ‘My Town My Pride’ for reaching out to urban population. The aspirational programme envisages bringing the governance to the doorsteps of people residing in urban pockets of J&K.
On the first day of this programme Monday the administration held several camps in and around city here. In one such camp held at Ganj Baksh Park, Nowhatta people of all age groups were seen busy with one activity or other. Another camp of the same nature was conducted at NigeenClub.
At Nowhatta the visiting officer was Hashmat Ali, Director Hospitality & Protocol and at Nigeen Club Majid Khalil Drabu, MD JK Cable Car Corporation was the designated officer to listen to public grievances and demands.
The administration had set up dozens of stalls providing services and disseminating information to the visitors. Every line department had kept their representatives available in these kiosks who were busy in assisting people to apply for or understand the benefits of schemes implemented by their respective departments.
At a kiosk of Social Welfare department half a dozen applications for pension and financial assistance under ISSS and NSAP categories were received.Similarly the School Education department were providing on spot free admissions to students besides giving free textbooks and uniform to the enrolled students.
The kiosk manned by Agriculture department informed that they are creating awareness among people about securing farm implements, tools like poly green houses on subsidized rates. They further claimed to provide subsidized, high yielding seed varieties and irrigation equipments to the eligible farmers.
At the kiosks of Jal Shakti, PWD and PDD the departmental representatives were collecting applications from the consumers. People were asking for round the clock water supply, black topping and widening of roads and up gradation or installation of new transformers from the concerned departments.
The department of Health were registering the people for getting the gold cards. They were also making women folk aware about the benefits for pregnant ladies and new borns extended by the department.
The department of Revenue in its kiosk were registering visitors for providing domicile and income certificates. Besides application regarding other revenue matters were collected to route them to concerned field functionaries present there.
On the occasion Youth Services & Sports department provided free sports kits and equipments to sports clubs and government schools. A sports kit including cricket, football, volleyball and Carrom sports gear was provided to local sports clubs. Few of the schools were provided with TT tables including GovtGirls Higher Secondary School, Nowhatta, Boys Hr Sec School Nowpora and Boys Higher Sec School, Khimber.
Besides these Employment, Urban Development, UEED, Animal Husbandry, SMC, LAWDA, Horticulture, Irrigation departments has also kept their persons available for disseminating information about welfare schemes rolled out by their departments.
The departments also had kept brochures, banners and booklets containing all the relevant information available at the venues. Besides the representatives were making speeches about the working and procedures of applying for taking benefits from their departments under different welfare programmes.