Jammu, Dec 18: J&K Regional Office of National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) organized a one day “Gender Sensitisation and Self Help Groups Meet for Bankers and government officials in Doda today.  District Development Commissioner Doda, Syed Sharif-ud-Din inaugurated the Meet.
The Meet was also attended by Assistant General Manager NABARD,   Sohan Singh, Additional District Development Commissioner, LDO Reserve Bank of India,   K S Bhatti, District Development Officer NABARD, Lead District Manager, and officials from various departments of state government, NGOs, and district level officials from J & K Bank, State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank and Cooperative banks.
While inaugurating the meet, DDC, according to an official statement said that 94 per cent of women workers are engaged unorganized sector and 83 per cent of these in agriculture and allied activities, like dairy, animal husbandry, sericulture, handloom, handicrafts. They face lot of problems for raw material, marketing, training and credit. Over the year SHGs Bank Linkage programme has made tremendous strides in India and it has become a household name in view of the multi-pronged benefits reaped from micro finance services by the poor in the country particularly for advancement and empowerment of women. Self Help Groups (SHGs) have become the common vehicle of development process, converging all development programmes for alleviation of poverty.
The DDC said that Self Help Group approach has not picked in the state of Jammu & Kashmir and the position in formation and credit linkage is not encouraging. Keeping in view the large number of rural household in the district Doda, he impressed upon the need for involvement of Government officials, banks, NGOs and other agencies to come forward for formation and linkage of Self Help Groups to provide livelihood to the rural poor, particularly rural women. He stated that district Doda has large number of families Below Poverty Line families which need to be brought in the ambit of Self Help Groups by the district agencies. To change the life style of poor families, skill development training programmes should be organized by the DRDA, Department of Agriculture, Horticulture, Handicrafts, Sericulture so that they can adopt self employed micro enterprises to supplement family income.                       
Assistant General Manager NABARD, Jammu Regional Office, Sohan Singh while explaining objective of the meet said that Micro finance sector has covered a long journey from micro savings to micro credit and then to micro enterprises and now entered the field of micro insurance, micro remittance, micro pension and micro livelihood. This gradual and evolutionary growth process has given a great boost to the rural poor in India to reach reasonable economic, social and cultural empowerment, leading to better life of participating households. Financial institutions in the country have been playing a leading role in the micro finance programme for nearly two decades. As on 31 March 2009, there are more than 61 lakh saving-linked SHGs and more than 42 lakh credit-linked SHGs and thus, about 8.6 crore poor households are covered under the programme.
AGM also said that NABARD Regional office Jammu has taken many initiatives for promotion of farm and non farm sector activities and SHGs in the Jammu & Kashmir by organising Capacity Building Programme for the bankers, NGOs, Government officials and other partners. He also urged banks and Government officials to take benefit of various programme of NABARD launched for alleviation of poverty and empowerment of women.

Lastupdate on : Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Fri, 18 Dec 2009 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:00:00 IST