Vidarbha farm widows get aid from Mumbai NGO

The Grand Maratha Foundation has extended aid for a community project designed to help farmers' widows in Pandharkawda in Maharashtra's Vidarbha region, an official said here on Tuesday.

The project, 'Dal Mill and Packaging Unit' costing around Rs 2.50 million, will provide livelihood to more than 200 widows in the targeted areas, said Kishore Tiwari, chairman of Vasantrao Naik Sheti Swavlamban Mission (VNSSM) here.

"Though the government announces financial assistance to the farmers widows regularly but the fund is not reaching the targeted beneficiaries owing to deliberate apathy of the bureaucracy," Tiwari pointed out.

Under the project, a common facility will be set up for 10 village panchayats across the Yavatmal district to help the farm widows with a means of livelihood.

The project got underway a couple of days ago and was launched by Rohit Shelatkar, director of the UK-based pharma major Vitabiotics and foundation representative Rajesh Tawade.

Widows were disbursed indigenous seeds developed by PKV Akola and urea from an NGO Dilasha to take up organic farming which would command good export prices.

On its part, the VNSSM will train widows with modern farming methods and running village level agro-processing units besides a full-fledged training centre to come up shortly.

--IANS

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