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World Bank pledges Rs. 5000 m to develop five districts

by Uditha Kumarasinghe

The World Bank has pledged Rs.5000 million to the Rural Economy Ministry to develop five districts within a period of five years from next year under the Community Development Project (CDP) aimed at poverty reduction in rural areas.

The five districts to be developed under the CDP are Badulla, Moneragala, Hambantota, Matara and Galle. Arrangements have been made to develop 1000 villages selected from these five districts within the next five years, a Ministry spokesman told the Daily News on Friday.

This project will follow a different strategy to the other rural development projects implemented in the country so far,he said.

" Within a short period, many activities were undertaken by the Rural Economy Ministry in an efficient manner with limited resources. As a result, the Government recommended that World Bank funds be allocated to the Ministry for implementation of a project on rural livelihood improvement," he said.

He said the project will follow the community-driven development (CDD) approach. The overall objective of the project is to assist the Government to reduce rural poverty by improving the well-being and incomes of the rural poor through better access to basic community, economic and social infrastructure and services and support for productive activities using the CDD.

Funds will be given directly to the community organisations to implement the projects. The community organisations would be responsible for implementing the projects with a percentage of the cost borne by the members of the community, thereby creating a sense of ownership of the projects in their minds. The project will address community needs and priorities in an integrated and holistic fashion, he said.

The spokesman said the proposed project would scale up the model that is being implemented under the Village Self-help Learning Initiative (VSHLI) pilot project which is a component of the Mahaweli Restructuring and Rehabilitation Project (MRRP). The VSHLI pilot project essentially aims at empowering communities to take their own decisions and to be accountable for the development process they initiated and implemented.

The proposed CDP is in conformity with the national poverty reduction strategy and the Country Assistance Strategy, and reflects the principles of equity, holistic development, community participation and control of resources, changing the role of Government and other partners and cost effectiveness.

He said a World Bank identification mission visited Sri Lanka from October 7 to 18 this year and held preliminary discussions with Rural Economy Minister Bandula Gunawardena and other senior Government Officials on the overall objective of the project. The mission also undertook field visits to three districts _ Badulla, Moneragala and Galle. 

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