West Champaran DM to get PM excellence award

Patna: The West Champaran district has been selected for the Prime Minister’s Award for Excellence in Public Administration, 2021 in the category of ‘Innovation District’ for its initiative, ‘Navpravartan startup zone Chanpatia’. The awards acknowledge and reward the extraordinary and innovative work done by the bureaucrats across the country.
PM Narendra Modi will present the award to the winners on April 21 to commemorate National Civil Services Day.Twelve awards, including two under innovation category, will be given on the occasion.
West Champaran DM Kundan Kumar will receive the award for setting up a startup zone in Chanpatia for the migrant workers who returned to the district during the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020. The startup zone has 57 units set up by the skilled labourers returned from Punjab, Maharashtra, Gujarat and other states. It created employment for more than 1,000 of them in the district.
Kundan said proposals were received from 141 entrepreneurs. “These units produce textile, apparel, e-rickshaw, stainless utensils, sports equipment, sanitary pad, dustbins among other items. We have exported 70,000 embroider Kashmiri shawls to Jammu and Kashmir, Banarsi saris to Varanasi, tracksuit to Ladakh and jackets to Ludhiana,” the DM told TOI on Monday.
He said branded goods are being produced here and exported across the country and even abroad. “We have sent tracksuits to Nepal and jackets to Spain. The total turnover of the start-up zone is more than Rs15 crore. There are so many diversifications in textile and apparel units. You name it and people get it there at a very cheap rate with best of qualities,” he said.
The DM said it is more like an industrial hub spread over 25 acres of land.
“The state government has been supporting this initiative. CM Nitish Kumar has given instruction for its expansion. We will also get the BIADA land for setting up more units. During the skill mapping, we saw highly-skilled labourers in footwear, textile designing and woodcraft.
“But the problem was to provide them jobs. So, I adopted a participative model and formed a team - Udyami Mitra Mandal — in each quarantine centre. They gave ideas with the help of their employers and we deputed one district officer with each team to provide them all help,” the DM said.
“For the cluster zone, we used the unused land in Bazaar Samiti. We started ‘plug & play model’ to provide them place and all basic facilities. But the major problem was financial resources. Banks were skeptical, but we held a meeting with the bankers and the workers gave their presentations. Impressed with this, the bankers provided them loan. We got Rs9 crore through PMEGP and District Industrial Innovation Scheme in a very short span. Besides the 57 units in Chanpatia, there are around 100 other units in the district,” Kundan said.
(With inputs from Tirthraj Kushwaha in Bagaha)