KMC preps up workers’ list for Duare Sarkar

Kolkata: With the Duare Sarkar initiative set to start at the beginning of next month, the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) is compiling a list of civic body workers who will be deployed at the camps to ensure Kolkata citizens are informed of the beneficiary schemes of the state government while KMC so far has received the highest number of applications for Lakshmi Bhandar scheme.

The Duare Sarkar camps will be set up from April 1 to April 20. The camps will have state government workers who would help people with filling out forms for the welfare schemes. In Kolkata, such camps will have KMC workers. A list has been compiled for the same that has names of more than 700 KMC employees approximately, including teachers of KMC primary schools. This list was compiled by the Personnel department, sources said.

According to a KMC official, the data from the civic body’s Social Welfare and Urban Poverty Alleviation department shows that in the financial 2022-23, Duare Sarkar camps were held in phases IV and V. The civic body had organised camps in all its 16 boroughs. Highlighting scheme-wise footfall registration in both these phases, the official said the footfall for Lakshmi Bhandar was 68,317 and 52,294 for Swasthya Sathi.

It is learnt that the total number of beneficiaries under Lakshmi Bhandar was 4,92,413. The Duare Sarkar camps by KMC witnessed about 58,407 new beneficiaries under this scheme. According to KMC, about 7484 SC, ST and OBC applications have been received during Duare Sarkar camps phase IV and V up to December 16, 2022, which have been sent to the Backward Class welfare department of the state government for the issue of necessary certificates and 11,471 of them have been issued by the department till December 16, 2022.