The Virudhunagar district administration has won the prestigious Skoch Award for promotion and nurturing of Farmers Producers Organisation and for successful implementation of Udayam and Kanmani programmes for ‘special’ persons.
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District Collector J Meganatha Reddy, who assumed office on June 17, 2021, has been instrumental in giving a new shape to the administration through which the needy people in the district benefit. With this objective in mind, the Collector, a young officer from the 2013 IAS batch, initiated programmes for the differently abled persons, soon after he assumed office.
The officials said that under the Udayam programme, at least 100 differently abled persons in the district, who were identified as below-poverty-line (BPL) category, were provided with western type toilets with hand support in their dwelling units. “ With ease and without anyone’s assistance, they can use the facility,” an officer in the district said.
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Similarly, Kanmani, a project targeted to improve under nourished babies in the 0-6 age groups were identified. A total of 650 children with their young mothers were diagnosed last year. At periodic intervals, the nurses in the local community visited the mothers and checked the weights of the babies. The mothers were given nutrients such as ghee, biscuits, dates, groundnuts, chikki and eggs.
Through the Horticulture department, the officials said that herbal based greens and among others were recommended for the young mothers. “The weight of the malnourished babies were improving,” a senior official in the Health and Family Welfare department said.
Since July 2021, close to 40 Farmers Producers Organisations have been floated and today around 30,000 farmers were enrolled as members. The produce — paddy, millets, oil seeds and among others — grown by them in the district were being sold through the FPOs. This benefitted them in a big way as the middlemen were absent, the officials in the Agri-Marketing Department said.
The tech-savvy Collector had also been interacting with the student community at periodic intervals, under ‘Coffee with Collector’ and the views and ideas of the participants were unique and amazing, a few officials from the School Education department said.
The Collector, in a press release on Friday stated that the district administration had implemented the objectives of the State government with the support of the officials at different ranks to the needy people. He said that the Skoch Award for good governance was for the people and his team of officers.