Maha: Cash rewards to Covid-free villlages
Mumbai: In order to curb the spread of coronavirus in rural areas, the Maharashtra government on Wednesday launched “Corona-Mukta Gaon” (Corona-free Village) competition, which will reward the successful villages with handsome cash prizes. The scheme has been inspired by the feat of five villages in the state.
In order to curb the spread of coronavirus in rural areas, the Maharashtra government on Wednesday launched “Corona-Mukta Gaon” (corona-free village) competition, which will reward the successful villages with handsome cash prizes. The scheme has been inspired by the feat of five villages in the state, which have managed to eradicate the virus from their jurisdiction.
The competition shall be held in all the six revenue divisions of the state with top three villages in each division getting cash prizes worth `50 lakh, `25 lakh, and `15 lakh. In addition to this, these winning villages shall also be provided additional funds of `50 lakh, `25 lakh, and `15 lakh each, as incentives for various development works.
“The corona-free village competition has been launched with an aim to encourage the efforts to chase the virus away from the rural areas and make the entire state free of coronavirus at the earliest,” said state rural development minister Hasan Mushrif.
The competition has been announced on the backdrop of CM Uddhav Thackeray’s appeal to people in rural areas to strive hard for making their villages corona-free. In his address, he had also praised the efforts of villages, which have attained Covid-free status in the state.
Rural areas in Maharashtra have been hit hard by the second coronavirus wave than the urban parts of the state. More Covid19 cases have been recorded as villages compared to cities, prompting the state machinery to concentrate more on rural areas.