Month: November 2015

WB CM invites industry captains for Bengal Global Business Summit 2016

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West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was present at the annual Bijoya Sammilani where she invited the industry captains of the State to be a part of the Bengal Global Business Summit to be held in January 8 and 9, 2016.

At the programme, the West Bengal Chief Minister also urged the foreign investors to invest in the State. The Chief Minister, on her visit to UK and Bhutan had already invited the industrialists to attend the Business Summit.

The 2015 Global Business Summit was a huge success. The proposed investment was of a mind-boggling Rs 2.43 lakh crore. Also, investments were not only sought and received for brick-and-mortar industries but for the crucial human resource development sector. The two-day event drew nearly a 1000 delegates, from across India and 20 other countries.

Speaking on the recent political events, she opines that shed desired for a stronger federal structure of the country.

Krishnagar Municipality builds Bengal’s first home for vagabonds

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In a first-of-its-kind initiative in the state, Krishnagar Municipality is building a four-storied house in Krishnagar town for vagabonds or people with no homes, jobs or access to two proper meals a day. The home, which is located near the Krishnagar bus stand, will be inaugurated in December.

Speaking of the project, Asim Saha, the chairman of Krishnagar Municipality, said, “We are building a four-storied house for the vagabonds in town. We are spending about Rs 1.19 crore and the home is near completion. They (the vagabonds) will get food free of cost.” Saha added that there are 222 vagabonds in town. Initially, there will be just 50 beds for them. An NGO will cook meals for them. We have already discussed this with the NGO. We are going to inaugurate the home in December,” he said

While visiting different places in town for work, Saha reportedly saw some vagabonds. Empathising with them, Saha, who many describe as a kind man, came up with a plan to build a house (or shelter) for them. Since money was an issue, he wrote to the government about this project. The government sanctioned Rs 1.19 crore.

MSME capital fund to come up in December

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The venture capital fund for micro, small and medium enterprises, which was proposed in the last State budget, will start functioning from next month.

The fund will come up with a corpus of Rs 200 crore. State commerce and industries Minister Dr Amit Mitra said that his department has started the process to identify bankable projects for funding. “We hope to start allocation for micro, small and medium scale enterprises from this fund from next month,“ he said. The fund will also offer seed capital to budding entrepreneurs for starting business.

Dr Mitra spoke on the venture capital fund while addressing the annual general meeting of MCC Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Bengal was marching ahead compared to many other states in the MSME sector. The MSME facilitation and technology centre has been functioning for the last few months.

Dr Mitra added that 56,872 new MSME units have registered in Bengal between May 2011 and October 2015. “This clearly shows the growth in MSME in Bengal during our regime,“ he added. He pointed out that there has been a five-fold increase in the number of MSME clusters during the regime of the Trinamool government. “Only 48 clusters were created in the four years before 2011. But in next four years since 2011, 183 clusters have been created,“ he added.

Dr Mitra also said that total bank credit to MSME during the four years of Mamata regime was Rs 74,437 crore compared to Rs 32,000 crore in the last four years of the Left Front government.

The State government is planning 341 rural marketing hubs for MSME and agro products. “We shall invest Rs 3 crore in each hub and the total allocation will be to the tune of more than Rs 900 crore,“ he added.

 

‘Smart’ kiosks in Bidhannagar for citizens

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In a ‘smart’ move, the Bidhannagar municipal corporation on Saturday opened a kiosk at the Mayor’s ward office in Salt Lake where residents will be able to contact him as well as the municipal commissioner through video-conferencing, submit building plans for sanction and pay their property taxes.

The civic authorities plan to introduce a smart card for all households of the township with in the next three months, using which residents will be able to know everything about municipal service and property taxes and pay the taxes through a common portal set up at the kiosk.

The next such smart kiosk will be opened at the City Centre mall and subsequently , at all the ward offices in Salt Lake.

As part of the initiative, the officials recently put up a 10 km canvas across the township, inviting residents to write or draw their suggestions to develop Salt Lake into a Smart City; it has been holding seminars for citizens and distributing feedback forms to homes, asking for their suggestions.

 

Image source: snipview.com

WB Govt plans to set up Anganwadi centres in tea gardens

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The state government has urgently sought funds from National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) in ‘stressed’ tea gardens of North Bengal.

The government wants to set up around 180 anganwadi centres in Alipurduar and Jalpaiguri. Anganwadis are government sponsored child care and mother-care centres.

The programme aims to benefit children in the age group of 0-6 years. These centres are run under Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) program to combat child-hunger and malnutrition.

The state government has sought Rs.19 crore from NABARD. The money has been sought through Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF), which is a wing of NABARD and provides direct loans to state governments.

A high-level meeting was held at Nabanna in presence of chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday and a task force was formed for maintaining co-ordination with several governments’ departments, including health, food, power, Public Health Engineering (PHE), ICDS, labour and others to prevent malnutrition.

Victory of tolerance over intolerance: Mamata Banerjee on Bihar results

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West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today said the BJP combine’s defeat in the Bihar assembly elections was a “defeat of intolerance”.

“Congratulations Nitish Kumarji, Laluji and your full team, and all my Bihar brothers and sisters,” the Trinamool Congress tweeted. This, she said, was a “victory of tolerance, defeat of intolerance”.

On October 25, Mamata Banerjee had made an appeal to the people of Bihar to re-elect Mr Nitish Kumar as the CM.

“Request you all in Bihar to please vote to re-elect Nitish Kumar ji as CM for greater need of our country & development in State,” she had tweeted.

On behalf of the party, National Spokesperson and Leader of the party in Rajya Sabha, Derek O’Brien said: “BJP loses. India saved.”

Tweet from Mamata Banerjee:

WB CM inaugurates a Kali Puja pandal at Girish Park

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Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee Friday inaugurated one of the famous Kali Puja pandal at Girish Park in Central Kolkata. After inaugurating the puja, the Chief Minister asked everyone to follow all the regulations during Puja.

“During Kali Puja we must ensure our festivities are not reason for someone else’s misfortune,” she said.

“We must follow all regulations during Kali Puja festivities. Enjoy the fun but with safety,” the Chief Minister added.

“Maa, Mother and Ammi are one and same. She cannot be divided. We worship Durga then Lakshmi. Now Kali Puja. Hope Maa Kali fills darkness with light. Let us pray to Maa Kali to bring happiness in everyone’s life,” WB CM said.

WB Govt allocates Rs 100 Cr for the welfare of tea garden workers

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A group of ministers (GoM) formed by chief minister Mamata Banerjee has decided to extend a series of benefits in the areas of food, health, power and education for the employees of not only closed or abandoned tea gardens but also of the stressed ones.

The GoM has decided to allocate a Rs 100 crore Tea Garden Employees’ Welfare Fund (formed in early 2015) as corpus for the benefit of the ailing tea garden workers.

The GoM headed by finance and industries minister Dr Amit Mitra had an hourlong meeting with the officials of education, food, health, PHE and power departments on Friday to discuss the strategy and modalities.

The other members of GoM also include power minister Manish Gupta, rural development minister Subrata Mukherjee, education minister Partha Chatterjee, north Bengal development minister Gautam Deb, labour minister Moloy Ghatak and agriculture minister Purnendu Bose.

It was decided that a task force will be formed under the district magistrates of Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar to oversee the implementation of the relief measures on a day-to-day basis. The state government has set a deadline of seven days to supply power directly to the workers houses in all the 234 Dooars gardens.

Besides free power, the state is organising a free kitchen in over 30 stressed gardens in Dooars.

WB CM slams Centre for not releasing funds for Bengal

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Mamata Banerjee once again slammed the Central government for not releasing funds for 37 schemes which was creating much hardship for the Bengal government and at the same time asked officials to complete all projects within three months.

WB CM was speaking to the media after a meeting with the senior bureaucrats at Town Hall and thanked them for their service to make the recent festival a major success.

She asked officials to go for an overdrive for completion of the projects for which the foundation stones had been laid. She warned if the declared projects were not started it should be started immediately.

The Chief Minister had slammed the Centre’s decision to withdraw funding for projects like ICDS, SSA, BRGF.

The CM said that the state government was performing better than the Centre and hit out at the Centre for not releasing any funds for the flood affected districts of Bengal.

UNICEF all praises for Nirmal Bangla Mission

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Bengal will become completely open defecation free by 2019, a delegation from UNICEF led by Chief of Section for Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Sanjay Wijesekera was told by West Bengal government.

Representatives of UNICEF on Thursday held a meeting with the State Minister for Panchayat and Rural Development, Subrata Mukherjee where they were shown a presentation on Nirmal Bangla Mission.

The delegation from UNICEF was impressed by the progress of Nirmal Bangla Mission. Mr Wijesekera assured full cooperation to West Bengal government in this regard.

Subrata Mukherjee said, “Not only Bengal, Nadia is the first district in the entire country to be declared open defecation free. Several districts like Hooghly, North 24 Parganas, West Midnapore have performed exceptionally under Nirmal Bangla Mission. These districts have almost achieved their targets.”

“We have taken the initiative to build toilets in every household. We are discouraging people from open defecation should awareness campaigns. This will usher in a social revolution,” he added.

A booklet and music video on Nirmal Bangla Mission was launched by Subrata Mukherjee on the occasion.