Palamu is all set to improve its Delta ranking in the 115 aspirational districts in the country which the Niti Ayog shortlisted for a tremendous jump on seven scores like health and nutrition, education, agriculture, water resources, basic infrastructural facilities, financial inclusion and skill development. Palamu stood 107 in this listing of 115 in July.
DC Palamu Shantanu Kumar Agrahari said on Sunday, “Our performance on health sector is good. There is more to be done on the nutritional front.” Romil Ravi, an aspirational district fellow (ADF) of Palamu on behalf of DC Palamu gave some figures related to health services here wherein he said institutional deliveries now in Palamu is nearing 100 per cent which was 92 per cent in July.
Again Ravi said new born babies breast feeding within one hour of the birth too has improved and has touched 92 per cent which was 80 in July. Live weighing of babies too has gone up.
TB success rate is described as 97 per cent but the grim fact is that the number of drug resistant TB cases is on the rise due to the patients abandoning midway the anti TB drugs and thus fails to cover the mandated period of medication.
There was a review meeting on the parameters on Saturday chaired by Palamu In-charge of aspirational district ADG of Police SN Pradhan. The DC was candid when he said electricity officials have been spurred to reach power connections to households so left out here.
ADF Romil Ravi said as against 3,66,713 households electricity has reached 2,48,551 households and thus remaining 1,18, 162 households are to be electrified.
The DC said installation of electric poles has been held up temporarily because crops are standing in fields of farmers and any work will damage their crops now so officials are waiting for harvesting of paddy for installing the poles for over head stretching of wires for reaching electricity in households.
He further said there is a huge demand of electricity meters say around 1.25 lakh but here the availability is just 8,000. Meter supplying agencies have been directed to shorten this gap at the earliest.
Sources said Palamu needs to be further toned up on its agro sector here as still soil testing here is almost a non starter since a village soil is categorized for three counts like irrigated, non irrigated and arid land. There are more than 5,000 hectares of fallow lands that too need to be recovered for agro activities here.
Palamu administration has merged 74 government schools bringing it down to 2,567 schools from 2,641 schools under directives from Niti Ayog a move here that has robbed ruling and opposition parties MLAs and MPs of their sleep whom the electorates have blamed for not doing anything to stall the merger of schools.
