PANJIM: In a bid to empower self governing bodies, the State Government has decided to prepare Gram Panchayat Development Plan (GPDP) for all 191 village panchayats with participatory planning from October 2.
The Constitution Amendment relating to Panchayats for greater participation of the people and more effective implementation of rural development programmes mandates people centered and people-oriented planning and therefore all the gram panchayats have to prepare the GPDP by participatory planning process, as is required under Fourteenth Finance Commission.
“The State Government is in the process of preparing the participatory GPDP from October 2 to December 31, 2018,” Director Panchayat Ajit Panchwadkar said.
The Director of Panchayats have prepared elaborate guidelines regarding various aspects such as identifying resource envelops, projectization, etc. Goa Institute of Public Administration and Rural Development (GIPARD) will act as a nodal agency for capacity building for participatory planning.
As such, an orientation programme on GPDP for Sarpanchas, village development committee (VDC) convenors, lady panch members and village panchayat secretaries has been organized on August 29 and August 30 in North and South Goa, respectively.
In North, the workshop will be held at Taleigao community hall, while in South it will take place in Mathany Saldanha Administrative complex from 10.30 am onwards. GIPARD will conduct the workshop.
“The workshop is organized for deliberating participatory activities before the GPDP Planning process, Awareness creations for people’s participations, actual GPDP Planning and also to discuss the action plan for actual preparation of GPDP,” Director Panchayat said.
The department has appealed all the elected Representatives to actively participate to enable the community connect for the purpose of preparation of concrete and effective GPDP.
Meanwhile, VDC Bastora Convenor Andrew D’Souza has expressed his unhappiness towards the last minute intimation by the department.
He said that though he has not made any official complaint to the department, telephonically has urged Director to ensure that such notices are served 72-48 hours in advance.
“I don’t understand whether director of Panchayat is serious on VDC or conducting this workshop just for the compliance sake,” he said adding since Director is out of state for official work, I preferred not to make any complaint.
