Bhubaneswar: Cabinet Secretary Pradeep Kumar Sinha Wednesday lauded the state’s performance in implementation of the Pradhan Mantri Khanij Kshetra Kalyan Yojana (PMKKKY) – a scheme aimed at welfare of people in areas affected by mining operations utilising funds collected through District Mineral Foundation (DMF).
“Orissa’s performance in implementation of PMKKKY or DMF is found best among all states,” said State Chief Secretary’s office quoting Sinha. Officials said the Cabinet Secretary’s response came after he reviewed progress of the programme in different states over a video conferencing Wednesday morning.
State Chief Secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi, Development Commissioner R Balakrishnan and Principal Secretary Steel & Mines Raj Kumar Sharma represented Orissa at the review meeting.
According to the state government, the Cabinet Secretary had said that Orissa has taken up the right projects as per norms and objectives of the programme.
Officials said that Orissa has developed and applied an IT-based system in the form of a web portal for sanction and monitoring of the projects under DMF. The state has also applied a good and successful IT monitoring system for mine and minerals. The learning and experiences from that was further developed and applied in designing the web portal for DMF which will be made transaction based portal soon.
It was clear from the review that the Centre would put in place a central web portal for monitoring progress of the scheme, said officials.
An official statement of the state government quoting a senior officer from the ministry said, “Orissa’s portal would be taken as a model portal in development of the central portal.”
Padhi said DMFs had been constituted in all the 30 districts. A total amount of around Rs 3,737 crore has been collected till November-end out of which around `1,369 crore came from coal & lignite; `2,351 crore from major minerals other than coal and `17 crore from minor minerals.
The projects were sanctioned under two broad heads: High Priority and Other Priority. The high priority areas included the projects like housing, drinking water, health, sanitation, roads, welfare of women & children and skill development in DMF areas for which Rs 1,200cr has been set aside.
Besides, projects worth Rs 707 crore has been sanctioned for other priority areas like connectivity, public facility energy, irrigation, afforestation among others. “In total around Rs 1,907 crore has been allotted to different districts against 5,886 sanctioned projects,” the Chief Secretary said.
PNN
