North Central Province gets Rs. 5.8 b for development

Wednesday, 30 July 2014 00:10 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

The Economic Development Ministry has allocated Rs. 5,791 million for developing the North Central Province, Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa Districts under the House-to-House, Village-to-Village National Economic Development Plan. The North Central Province program will cover 997 Grama Seva Divisions in 30 Divisional Secretariat areas of the 10 Electorates of the districts. The beneficiaries will be 1,337,141 persons of 348,926 families of the Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa Districts. According to Anuradhapura Government Agent Mahinda Seneviratne and Polonnaruwa Government Agent Nimal Abeysiri, 2,788 villages will benefit from this program which is being launched under the direction of Economic Development Minister Basil Rajapaksa on President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s advice.

Ministers Maithripala Sirisena, S.M. Chandrasena, Tissa Karaliyadda and Duminda Dissanayake, Chief Minister Ranjith Samarakoon, Deputy Ministers W.P. Ekanayake, Chandrasiri Sooriyaarachchi, Weerakumara Dissanayake, Siripala Gamalath and H.P. Muthukumarana, Parliamentarians Roshan Ranasinghe and Shehan Semasinghe and other people’s representatives will be supervising the development program under which Rs. 2,123 million for Rajarata Navodaya, Rs. 66 million for sanitary and other facilities for rural schools, Rs.1,452 million for Gama Neguma, Rs. 280 million for wildlife and nature conservation, Rs. 228 million for Divi Neguma livelihood development, Rs. 630 million for Agrarian Development and Rs. 330 million for Local Government and Provincial Councils have been allocated.

Also allocated for these purposes is Rs. 275 million under implementation of proposals by people’s representatives and Rs. 71 million under the Decentralised Budget. In addition 26 rural bridges in the North Central Province have already been completed under the island-wide program to build 210 rural bridges under the Economic Development Ministry’s direction. Work on an additional number of bridges in the North Central Province is scheduled to begin in the district under the program to build 1,000 bridges, as proposed under this year’s Budget.