SHILLONG, Feb 3: NPP national president and Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma on Friday released the party manifesto “People’s Document: Vision 2023-28” during an election rally in Jowai.
The party had also released its “Report Card to the People 2023” highlighting the achievements of the NPP-led MDA Government as compared to their promises before the 2018 elections.
The NPP manifesto talks about its vision of providing five lakh jobs and employment opportunities to the youth, exactly two lakh more than what the TMC promised in its 10 Pledges.
The document also promises that existing schemes that have benefitted the people would continue with more support and greater coverage. Along with it, new schemes and policies would be taken up to enable Meghalaya to become one among the top 10 states in the country, it states.
The document talks about village community facilitators in 6,500 villages, CM village connectivity scheme for road construction, boost to sports infrastructure, agriculture logistics infrastructure, 1,000 CM facilitation centres for providing government services at the grassroots level, FOCUS & FOCUS+ schemes, prime hubs for entrepreneurs, bridges, airport, health and education infrastructure.
5 lakh jobs: The people’s document underlines NPP’s vision to create five lakh jobs and employment opportunities for the youth. A special focus on entrepreneurship, tourism, agro-processing and knowledge/digital sectors in both the urban and rural areas of the state has been laid down. Skilling of youth has been planned through creation of multi-sectoral skill parks, exposure trips and livelihood sectors. NPP remains focused on entrepreneurship by creating PRIME hubs across all blocks and supporting entrepreneurs through the PRIME scheme. NPP emphasises on building up on its success of being the “best start-up state” in India and continue creating better support system to nurture the entrepreneurs.
Support to youth: NPP would also focus on identification and utilisation of the state’s sporting potential by providing world class sports facilities including stadiums, trainings, talent identification and scholarships. The existing programmes in this area would be enhanced to include larger pool of talents and increased support to them. NPP’s vision envisages hosting of national level sporting events like the North East Olympic Games.
Facilitation centres: The vision documents also plans out creating 1,000 CM’s facilitation centres to deliver government services to every village. The party also plans to engage a cadre of village community facilitators (VCFs) to deliver the services to the last mile. These cadres would be the single point of contact for the citizens with the government providing wide variety of services starting from citizen services like PDS, Pension to grievance redressal. These itself would create thousands of jobs and ensure even the household from the remotest village of Meghalaya has access to Government services.
Support to farmers: The party would continue its support to farmers of the state through FOCUS and FOCUS+. The programmes will be expanded to cover all the producer households of the state irrespective of their area of residency. The vision lists key interventions across all areas of agri-value chain, to enable the farmers to produce more, transport easily and sell at the best prices. The party’s vision is to continue its support through specific mission mode projects and benefit all farmers by 2023-28. These interventions have already reaped great success to various farmers such as Lakadong where a whopping 13,000 farmers are now befitted, which was merely 1,000 five year back.
Connectivity: NPP has chalked out a detailed village-by-village plan to connect Meghalaya through all-weather roads. While it would continue emphasis through central schemes to build new roads and connect villages, it ideates a new scheme – “Chief Minister’s Village Connectivity Scheme” to connect the rest of the villages. The party plans to replace timber bridges in the state with more durable RCC or steel bridges. The document notes that the total length of rural roads constructed in Meghalaya since 2018 has surpassed the total constructed by past governments in the last 20 years.
Infrastructures: The vision also lists interventions to take Meghalaya forward through several key infrastructure development projects. Improved air connectivity, internet to all villages, IT Park, water management and piped water to households are few of the key areas. The party plans to establish economic growth centres and logistics hubs in different districts in line with a new industrial policy, which will attract investors and industries thereby creating more livelihood opportunities.
Health sector: The document notes that the health sector in Meghalaya has witnessed a massive transformation. New and upgraded health infrastructures, focused interventions to mother and child and health insurance schemes have been a great success during the last five years. A new Chief Minister’s Affordable Drug Centres is being planned to provide affordable medicines for the people of the state.
