Guwahati: Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi on Monday directed various departments to speed up implementation of schemes for women and children to achieve the goals envisaged in the CM’s vision document for 2016.
Presiding over the annual review meeting with ministers and senior officials here, Gogoi said the departments have to work in tandem to achieve the goals envisaged in the Chief Minister’s Vision Document for Women and Children 2016.
He stressed on the need for concerted efforts to bring down both infant and maternal mortality rate, anaemia and malnourishment, besides improving the child sex ratio.
A mapping exercise has to be carried out to identify the areas lagging behind in health parameters to get a more realistic picture, Gogoi said.
The Chief Minister pointed out that there was a need to reduce the number of school drop-outs and this was an area of serious concern calling for special measures.
“A ministerial committee will be constituted to conduct a block wise survey for bringing down the school drop-outs, especially at the secondary stage,” he said.
Gogoi emphasised on the need for a comprehensive action plan together with the other North Eastern states to curb human trafficking, child labour, crime against women, narcotics and psychotropic substances.
He also pointed out that there was a need to regulate the placement agencies to keep track of persons recruited from outside the state.
Among the major goals set by the vision document are reducing infant mortality rate to 38 per 1,000 live births, reducing maternal mortality to 210 per one lakh live births, reducing total fertility to 2.1 per cent, improving child sex ratio by 30 points to 987, reducing anaemia among children by 45 per cent and achieving 100 per cent enrolment of girls up to Class VIII.
It also has set the target of bringing child labourers into the educational mainstream, creating women’s cell in every police station, providing sanitary toilets and safe drinking water to all rural habitations and reducing stamp and registration charges.
The Chief Minister said that even as the state has shown progress in the field of reducing mortality among women and infants and providing greater empowerment and opportunities, a lot more remains to be achieved.
Assam government had launched the ambitious scheme in June last year with a target of achieving 16 goals against 47 monitorable indicators for women and child welfare by 2016.
The document, titled as ‘Chief Minister’s Vision for Women and Children: 2016’ also seeks to provide 33 per cent reservation for women in all skill development programmes, besides curbing child labour and trafficking of women.
Earlier, the report of the State level Committee constituted for improving the health of women and children was handed over to the chief minister during the review meeting. (PTI)