Jammu, Nov 12 (PTI) The Jammu and Kashmir administration on Thursday constituted five functional committees to strengthen panchayats in the union territory.

The Department of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj has set up the committees for employment generation, works and infrastructure, and natural and human resource management, an official spokesperson said.

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A committee for natural resources management, inter alia, is tasked to conserve surface and ground water and prevent overflowing of useful water into drains, manage water works, undertake water conservation measures, prevention of encroachment of tank bed land, and protection of forest, he added.

The committee will be headed by the sarpanch concerned as its chairman.

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Among the committees is a functional committee on human resources that will propagate the importance of being literate and organise literacy drives, ensure that all children in the age group of 6-14 are compulsorily enrolled in school and educate people to prevent diseases by following protective health care programmes, the spokesperson said.

A committee for employment generation and self-help groups will facilitate collection and processing of data relating to the unemployed and their employment needs and maintaining lists of manual labour of the village. The committee will have a representative of the labour department, handicraft department, umeed, SHG member and panch as its members, the spokesperson said.

Secretary Sheetal Nanda emphasised that the committees will not only contribute to the overall development of the panchayat but would also ensure frequent interaction between sarpanchs, panchs and functionaries of various departments, leading to more information dissemination about various government schemes.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)