Gama Neguma rolls on

Lakshmi DE SILVA

The Gama Neguma village reawakening program had built 7,901 kilometres of rural road to access remote backward villages, uplif their socio-economic status enabling these villages bring their produce to the markets, Nation Building and Estate Infrastructure Development Ministry sources said.

The Gama Neguma program during the past four years had reached the remotest villages with the concept of minimizing the poverty levels, allowing villagers to give their own ideas of implementing development projects in the villages.

The main facets of the Gama Neguma program are human development, improving the living standards of the villagers and thereby ensuring national development, sources said.

The highest ever allocation since independence of 39 billion rupees for village development was made under this program during the past four years. The specialty of the program was that target community contributed their labour for the projects so that Rs 500,000 allocated for a village project would be actually worth Rs 750,000 when completed with the labour input made free by the villagers.

There were also allocation of funds made by various Ministries like Samurdhi or even the Provincial Councils for rural roads or other rural development projects. The Nation Building and Estate Infrastructure Development Ministry coordinated in all these projects to prevent overlapping and duplication, the sources said.

The Gama Neguma's main objective is to eradicate poverty at rural level. It had already reached 14,000 Grama Niladhari divisions in all parts of the country to build infrastructure and ensure livelihood development of the villagers.

Proposals from the village communities were accepted to implement the program as different regions or villages have different challenges and opportunities for development, the sources said.