Odisha lays stress on infrastructure development: Governor

Unveiling a slew of steps to meet the basic infrastructure needs in a time-bound manner, Odisha Governor S C Jamir today said the state government would launch new programmes like "Chief Minister's Sadak Yojana" and "Chief Minister's Employment Generation Scheme."
"The government shall fulfill in a time-bound manner the primary infrastructure needs in areas of road, communication, drinking water, electrification, irrigation, agriculture and education," Jamir said addressing the inaugural session of the 15th Odisha Assembly here.
He said these requirements would be met in both rural and urban areas so that lack of access to infrastructure would not become a barrier to growth and well-being of people.

In order to provide road connectivity to villages, a new rural connectivity scheme namely "Chief Minister's Sadak Yojana" would be launched, Jamir said.
Similarly, the scope of "Biju Setu Yujana" would be expanded, while the state government would ensure access to power and piped water in rural areas, he said.
To prepare the vast majority of youths coming into workforce annually, the government would introduce a "Chief Minister's Employment Generation Scheme" to upgrade skills of at least 150 youth from every Gram Panchayat, who would then be linked to loan and subsidy, the governor said.

An "Odisha Youth Innovation Fund" would be created to incubate new business ideas coming from young entrepreneurs, he said adding recruitment in government in all fields would be scaled up and recruitment of local talent facilitated in all industries and investments coming into the state.

Referring to agriculture, Jamir said even though a marginal reduction in the number of people dependent on farm sector and allied activities was witnessed in recent years, agriculture would continue to be the backbone of economy.
As input management held the key to sustained agriculture productivity improvement, the government envisioned to create an additional irrigation potential for ten lakh hectares in the next five years besides providing quality seeds, fertilisers, pesticides, insecticides and required technical extension services in every panchayat, he said.
A comprehensive Warehousing Act would be legislated to create storage infrastructure in every panchayat, while subsidy based cold storage facilities would be established on PPP mode in all blocks, Jamir said.

A second Agriculture University would be established in backward KBK region to augment manpower needs for the agriculture sector and also benefit the farming communities of technological advances, he said.
The fight for Special Category State status for Odisha would be intensified with emphasis on Odia "Swabhiman" (pride) till the demand was acceded to by the central government, he said adding an Odia University would be set up to facilitate all round development of the language.