Presiding over the round table conference on ‘Development Communication’ with the members of World Bank Communications Team, Vini Mahajan Additional Chief Secretary (ACS) Industries Department Punjab stressed upon the urgent need of Communications Capacity Building in the government departments. She said that the success of government schemes and projects depends largely on peoples’ perception about them and this in turn rests upon how well are they communicated to the stakeholders. “Strong Communication helps to overcome public resistance”, said she.Laying stress on appropriate tapping of social media platforms for catalysing the information dissemination process, ACS suggested capacity building within each department and setting up of a dedicated Communications Development Cell in the Department of Information and Public Relations with full technical support from the department of Governance Reforms as well as Information Technology.Earlier, Mr. Sudip Mazumdar and Ms. Sona Thakur from the World Bank Communications Team gave presentations on projects that garnered massive public support due to effective communications strategy.
Reiterating the intrinsic role of communication in development of the State, they suggested undertaking Communication Need Assessment Survey before the launching a publicity campaign. The World Bank representatives assured all technical support for conducting Communication Need Assessment Surveys.Mr. Gurkirat Kirpal Singh, Secretary Information and Public Relations Department informed that the department was fully alive to the up surging role of unconventional media. He said that in order to meet the communication challenges, a project of roping in social media experts was in the pipeline and a round of training of officials of various departments has already been conducted to hone their communication skills and further trainings would be undertaken on demand basis.
During the conference at Punjab Bhawan Chandigarh, Principal Secretaries, Secretaries and Directors of various departments were present including Ms. Raji P. Srivastva, Mr. R.K. Verma, Mr. Krishan Kumar, Ms. Jaspreet Talwar, Ms. Anindita Mitra, Ms. Tanu Kashyap, Mr. D.S. Mangat, Mr. Navjot Pal Singh Randhawa, Mr. Puneet Goyal, Mr. Mohinder Pal and Mr. N.K. Sharma.