Amalgamating three key Government bodies:

Divineguma Development Department to alleviate poverty

By Dhaneshi YATAWARA

The Bill to establish the new ‘Divineguma’ Development Department was presented in Parliament by Economic Development Minister Basil Rajapaksa last week. The new Department is formed by amalgamating three key Government bodies working towards poverty alleviation.

The three institutes to be joined i.e. Samurdhi Authority, Southern Development Authority and the Udarata Development Authority have been working since their inception to eradicate poverty from the country. By amalgamating, all officers of these Government organisations including all the Samurdhi officers comprising more than 25,000 working islandwide, will be absorbed to the new Department and they will be eligible for a pension. Other than making poverty alleviation program more streamlined, the formation of the new department provides a solution to the Samurdhi officers to tackle their tasks more effectively.

“This proposed Act which is presented to Parliament will protect the Samurdhi Movement in establishing the ‘Divineguma’ Development Department. Under this new move, job security will be guaranteed for the Samurdhi officers which in turn will be an encouragement for our contribution to the country’s development,” said Jagath Kumara, the General Secretary of the All Ceylon Samurdhi Development and Agriculture Research Product Assistants’ Association.

“It is a delight that Samurdhi officers’ contribution has lowered the poverty of the country to eight percent which was at 32 percent when Samurdhi started,” Jagath Kumara explained.

“Under the direction of President Mahinda Rajapaksa and Economic Development Minister Basil Rajapaksa, many solutions had been given to the problems of Samurdhi recipients,” hee added.

The Trade Unions of the Samurdhi Officers, meeting the media last week, stressed that the Opposition has a big responsibility to ensure that the Bill to convert the Samurdhi Authority into the Divineguma Department is passed. “Not only will it serve the rural community but it will solve an injustice that the Samurdhi officers were facing since 1995,” he added. Sri Lanka Freedom Samurdhi Managers and Coordinating Officers’ Association President Gamini Abewickrama said, around 25,000 Samurdhi workers will be attached to the state service once the Divineguma Department is established.

“Converting an Authority into a Department is an historical event. As such action had not been taken up to now regarding any institution in the country,” he said. “There are around 2,500,000 Samurdhi beneficiary families countrywide.

The new move will be a blessing to these beneficiaries. Around 25,000 workers are affiliated to this Authority,” he said.

The objective of the Department is be to carry out such development activities as may be required to alleviate poverty and bring about a society guaranteeing social equity. This will promote the individual family and group-centred livelihood economic development activities ensuring food security for a family.

This intends to mobilise and empower people to speed up the national development through providing micro-financial facilities for the purpose of promoting the livelihood development of people.

Overall this will develop the human capital in order to uplift living standards of people while creating a social security network for those vulnerable social groups of a society.

As the Bill states, ‘Divineguma’ community based organisations will be set up with the voluntary participation of ‘Divineguma’ beneficiaries. ‘Divineguma’ regional organisations will be established for the purpose of supervising, monitoring and evaluating the functions of such organisations at regional level. “Divineguma” district committees will be established representing all ‘Divineguma regional organisations functional within a district.

The Government hopes to set up Divineguma Community Based Banks and Banking Communities under the recently drafted Bill to establish a new Department for ‘Divineguma Development. The ‘Divineguma’ Community based banks will be set up covering the area of authority of one or more ‘Divineguma’ community based organisations.

By setting up these banks, the Ministry plans to promote micro-financial services for ‘Divineguma’ beneficiaries. This would help encourage the savings habit among beneficiaries, to develop the investment potential which in turn would provide credit facilities to the beneficiaries.

Two funds, the ‘Divineguma Development Fund and the ‘Divineguma Revolving Fund will be set up under the system.

The proposed Department for Divineguma development will be the authority to supervise, monitor, control and manage ‘Divineguma’ community based organisations.

It has become necessary to improve the individual, family and group centred livelihood development activities, ‘Divineguma’ intends to mobilise people into a national development process at community level establishing ‘Divineguma’ community based organisations thus building up regional, district and national level co-coordinating network and developing and promoting a micro- finance banking system.

Economic Independence and self reliance are key to a prosperous village. Meeting one’s own needs was a hallmark of a classic Sri Lankan village. Coordination at a village level is essential for the success of this program.

It is crucial that the monitoring and evaluation of the program is maintained by all partners collectively whilst at the same time, maintaining autonomy, transparency and accountability, particularly by the three facilitators that conduct the selection process. Refinements and improvements should be based on evidence collected when assessing the impact of the program on a regular basis.