A million SHGs under livelihood mission to employ 1cr by 2024

Lucknow: To provide job opportunities, especially to migrants hit by the lockdown, the State Rural Livelihood Mission (SRLM) has managed to expand its footprint in 23 more districts to cover the entire state in the last two months.
Until now, the mission, conducted by the rural development department, had its presence in 52 districts. However, as SRLM attained a major role in providing job opportunities, the state government decided to implement in the remaining 23 districts.The newly added districts include Amroha, Ballia, Bulandshahr, Etah, Ayodhya, Farrukhabad, Ghazipur, Hathras, Jaunpur, Kanpur Dehat, Kasganj, Kaushambi, Kushinagar, Mathura, Mau, Muzzaffarnagar, Pilibhit, Rae Bareli, Rampur, Sambhal, Sant Kabir Nagar, Shahjahanpur and Sitapur.
Mission director Sujit Kumar said that the 23 districts cover 139 new blocks. With this, 593 blocks covering all 75 districts have been covered over the past few months. He said that around 40 lakh people are associated with 3.65 lakh self-help groups.
“The target is to expand SRLM to constitute 10 lakh self-help groups with an aim to get 1 crore people associated to SHGs by 2024,” he said. “The number of SHGs therefore needs to increase gradually as per the requirement,” an official said.
The development comes even as the rural development department works overtime to constitute more SHGs and even join them to form a bigger conglomerate in a bid to expand its activities under National Rural Economic Transformation Project which is proposed to be conducted in 31 districts.
Amid the pandemic, the department roped in SRLM to manufacture face masks and personal protection equipment kits, especially khadi masks, which the department wishes to sell at Rs 5 per piece.
“A lot of people have been buying products manufactured by the SHGs,” Kumar said, adding that the aim is to provide a mask to every individual in the state. In Lucknow alone, around 427 women associated with different SHGs have manufactured more than 3 lakh masks.