Report card on tea tribes

File picture of a tea labourer in Assam Guwahati, Feb 19 : Dispur is preparing a “report card” to highlight the steps it has been taking for the welfare of the tea tribes in the state. The report card, being prepared under the instruction of chief minister Tarun Gogoi, would not only be a comprehensive list of its ongoing and new schemes but also be a comparative study of the steps taken by the government in power and the AGP-led government it succeeded.  The instruction came last month soon after the floating of the National People’s Party, which has been espousing the cause of the Adivasis/tea communities. The state government has drawn flak for dilly-dallying on the issue of according Scheduled Tribe status to the tea community. Sources today said the tea tribes welfare department, which implements a majority of the schemes through its Rupnagar-based directorate, has submitted a list of its achievements to the chief minister last week for his perusal before being compressed into a report. The final report could be published as a white paper or it could be incorporated in the party’s manifesto for circulation in the run-up to the elections to counter the negative vibes emanating from the tea belt, which has otherwise been traditionally voting for the Congress. They said the directorate has already submitted a report showing budget allocation, budget expenditure, total allocation of plan budget, utilisation of plan funds, among others, for the period from 1996-97 to 2008-09. Going by the initial report, the government would be harping on how the allocations of the directorate have been increasing from Rs one crore a year till 2001-02 to Rs 10 crore in 2005-06 to Rs 23 crore in 2007-08 to Rs 37 crore in 2008-09. “We have set up a permanent five-storey address for the directorate here which will have facilities for a rest house, a 22-bed girls’ hostel, a museum and a conference hall,” a source said. The paper will highlight the steps taken to empower the students and youths of the community like the construction of the 50 skill development training centres across the state. The training centres would cater to the need of vocational training of the targeted communities from March, setting up of 11 boys and 11 girls’ hostels, financial assistance for higher studies like MBA and IIT and distribution of bicycles and solar lamps to matriculates and Class VIII students respectively. The schemes would provide healthcare by tying up with garden hospitals and boosting the water supply and sanitation scheme, in association with the public health engineering department and Unicef. Financial assistance would also be provided to the community for earning a livelihood.