New Delhi: An agency will be set up in urban areas to take care of the needs of particularly vulnerable tribal groups (PVTGs) living in cities and help them overcome cultural barriers, problems of landlessness, trafficking, safety and other aspects.
The agency will also facilitate skill upgradation and issuance of caste certificates, according to the revised guidelines of Scheme of Development of Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) recently approved by the government.
Under the guidelines, the scheme will cover 75 identified PVTGs and enable each state to focus on areas like livelihood, employment opportunities and economic development of the groups through agriculture, skilling or vocational training, education, land distribution and land development, social security, housing, irrigation, sports including traditional and tribal games and sports for their comprehensive socio-economic development. The project authorities will tap resources for above activities from other schemes of the Tribal Affairs Ministry, other Centrally sponsored schemes of other Ministries and schemes of state governments, particularly the tribal sub-plan (TSP) component of the state plan to ensure convergence of funds and manpower under the scheme.
“The funds under this scheme would be made available only for important activities for the survival, protection and development of PVTGs,” a senior official from Tribal Affairs Ministry said.
All the 18 state governments and the Union Territory of Andaman and Nicobar islands will prepare long term Conservation-cum-Development (CCD) Plan for each PVTG of their state on the basis of the requirement assessed through baseline and other specific surveys. “The activities should be outcome-driven and should focus on making a visible impact such as improvement in human development indices and infrastructure through parameters which can be verified,” says the revised guidelines.
On the aspect of health, emphasis will be given on setting up of special health centres for PVTGs, beyond National Health Mission (NHM) norms.
Stress will also be laid on offering support to existing institutions for manpower, medicines, equipment, buildings, need to undertake health surveys of PVTGs including issuing health cards to them indicating their health status especially with respect to sick-cell anemia (100 per cent screening).
Untied funds for emergency and specific needs will be kept aside, training for paramedics amongst the tribal group will be imparted and use of mosquito nets to contain malaria, composite fish culture to contain mosquito population and also to supplement protein for nutrition should be encouraged apart from 100 per cent health facility coverage of pregnant mother and immunization of children.
As regards the aspect of education, the focus is on making efforts to ensure 100 per cent physical enrolment in schools through campaign mode, setting up of larger residential co-educational schools in PVTG areas where access to schools is poor, literacy rate is very low and dropout rate of girls is high. (PTI)
The skill development and upgradation activities in the CCD plan should aim at enhancing the livelihood and income generation capacity of the PVTGs on a long term sustainable basis. It is also essential that equal focus should be given to women in all these activities. Under agriculture, PVTG funds should be used for revival of traditional nutritious crops, crop planning to ensure multiple crops and crop rotation to ensure periodic replenishment of soil nutrients. PTI PLB PRM 03171743
