Goa scheme for girls faces closure

PANAJI: Goa government's two-decade-old scheme providing financial assistance to girls from families below poverty line for their marriage is on the verge of closure due to poor response from applicants.

State-run Institute of Public Assistance which is popularly known as Providoria has not received a single application for its scheme 'Assistance for a marriage of a girl child' which was conceived in 1997.

"We have not received any application for assistance in the last four years. We used to get around 20-25 applications annually earlier for getting financial help under this scheme," Director of Institute of Public Assistance Vasanti Parvatkar told PTI today.

The recently introduced schemes for the girl child's marriage including 'Ladli Lakshmi' which provides assistance of Rs one lakh has overshadowed the previous one.

"There is a similar scheme introduced by Department of social welfare due to which we have stopped getting the applications (for this scheme)," she said.

The scheme which was drafted in 1997 was aimed to provide only Rs 1,000 for the beneficiary.The beneficiary who was supposed to be from the Below Poverty Line was asked to produce several documents making the process cumbersome.

Parvatkar said the Institute of Public Assistance is getting good response for its other schemes including the financial help to procure medicines for persons in need.

"We have given benefit to several people under this scheme. Only those medicines which are not available in government-run hospitals are allowed to be procured under this scheme," she added.