Agartala, April 03:German-based investment group GTZ mission has expressed satisfaction over the resource creation activities of Indo-German Development Cooperation (IGDC) in Tripura, Chief Executive Officer Dr A K Gupta said.
Dr Gupta told UNI here today that GTZ Mission, headed by Hans Helmirch, reviewed the entire project activities since March 30 and yesterday formally met Forest Minister Jitendra Chowdhury and Chief Secretary S K Panda.
GTZ project was launched in June 2009 for natural resource management and value addition of forest produces along with asset creation though land-based and non-land based activities with Rs 90 Crore seed money in 104 villages under eight revenue blocks of Dhalai and North Tripura districts.
“We have targetted to ensure the income generation activities at the optimum level from the land where the deed was given to forest dwellers under Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act in the project area,” Dr Gupta said, adding that as many as 1.18 lakh families were given land-deed so far in the state.
Besides, utilisation of patta land (land-deed) convergence of fund for development of the project villages had also been targetted and so far about Rs one crore was given to the 35 villages from IGDC where planning, execution of the work and financial management were done by the village development planning and implementation committee (VDPIC) headed by village chief, he stated.
“IGDC aims to generate at least Rs 360 Crore funds with the seed money of Rs 90 Crore of GTZ through fund convergence, as the VDPICs of the project villages are preparing both financial and technical plan for utilisation of patta land and all the related government departments are allocating funds for execution of the related works and our role is to supervise the entire work,” Dr Gupta pointed out.
He claimed that the idea of VDPICs was mooted from the grassroots empowerment programme of the state government and it might be another model of bottom-up planning, implementation and management approach.
In connection with the project submitted by Tripura government for poverty alleviation through natural resource management to Government of India, GTZ had extended support to implement the six-year-long project, Dr Gupta said. Germany would also extend technical support to implement the schemes aimed at improving the socio-economic condition of the people, especially tribal people dependant on forests, he added.
Meanwhile, Mr Chowdhury asserted that external-aided GTZ project of German (Frankfurt based KFW group) government had been helping in economic development about two lakh population of 50,000 poor families in two districts of the state and the entire money would be spent for socio-economic upgradating of tribal Jhumias in the form of natural resource management and value addition of forest produces.
“Our main aim is to provide technical assistance to utilise the natural resources for sustainable development to make poor people self-reliant and we are fortunate because it is the first-of-its-kind in India,” Mr Chowdhury said, adding that more than 100 Joint Forest Management (JFM) committees and 300 self-help groups was involved in the project.
The Participatory Natural Resource Management in Tripura under Indo-German cooperation would cover 343,100 hectares of forest land to reduce the activities of Jhum cultivation (slash and burn shifting cultivation) and restore bio-diversity, he pointed out.
———UNI————