Meghalaya plans to raise village volunteers to connect the grassroots with the government and bring about reforms in the state administration.
Speaking at a function to celebrate the 16th National Civil Services Day today, Chief Minister Conrad Sangma said, “One of the important reforms proposed is to have village volunteers who will be the representative of the government in that village. About 6500 volunteers will be connected with the government through central database to help the government get real time information and update on everything that is happening inside the village.”
Sangma elaborated that these village volunteers can inform the government in times of emergency like floods, landslides, disruption of power due to transformer blow up or water disruption due to pipeline bursts. The volunteer can also be an important banking correspondent so that old age pensions, assistance to person with disabilities and other schemes of the government can reach beneficiaries at their doorsteps.
“These volunteers at the grassroots level will also be connected to different self help group programmes so that delivery will be easier and faster so that the villagers who need the basic services of certificates, schemes and development should not face the different challenges we have in our administrative system,” he added.
He also spoke of the need to empower and strengthen the gram sevaks and look into how to improve the existing working system of the gram sevaks.
