Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal today ordered to expedite the process of enrollment and distribution of 28.50 lakh blue cards under Atta Dal scheme by February this besides initiating preparation of smart health cards under cashless health insurance schemes launched for farmers, traders, labourers in the state.Reviewing all the welfare and developmental schemes in a meeting with DCs here at Punjab Bhawan, Deputy Chief Minister ordered them to take necessary steps for enrollment and distribution of smart blue cards under atta dal scheme also to be used under Bhagat Puran Singh Sehat Bima Yojna. He informed that recently Punjab government has launched a cashless health insurance scheme which would benefit approximately 2 lakh labourers, 2 lakh traders and 10 lakh farmers of the state.
Mr Badal instructed the concerned departments to expedite the process of making proper arrangements of to cover all the beneficiaries giving them prior intimation besides involving elected representatives in the process.He also directed that the meeting of district level advisory committees and district grievance committees should be convened in the first week of every month by the cabinet ministers. He also asked the Chief Secretary Mr. Sarvesh Kaushal to issue orders regarding this and also directed that Chief Parliamentary Secretaries would head the advisory committees and divisional grievance committees at sub-divisional level every month.Reviewing the progress of 'sewa kendars' being setup in the rural and urban areas Mr. Badal revealed that the 2174 sewa kendars would be launched on Baisakhi this across the state and asked the chief secretary to take stock of the preparations. Concentrating on the skill development sector, Deputy CM asked the Secretary Technical Education and Industrial Training Mr. R.K. Verma to fasten the pace of constructing 150 skill centers in villages and towns which would cost Rs. 25 lakh per center.
In an important decision, Deputy Chief Minister appointed the chief secretary as the nodal officer to supervise the blue card and cashless health insurance card schemes. He also made the DCs and SDMs the nodal officers of welfare schemes at district and sub-divisional level and further instructed the DCs to review progress of all welfare schemes every Monday and send a consolidated report.He also asked the DCs to carry out a comprehensive review of the empanelled hospitals under cashless health insurance scheme and recommend the inclusion of any reputed out hospital if any besides asking for those hospitals to be struck off the list which don’t have adequate facilities. He also asked the health department to design a logo for the empanelled hospitals so that the beneficiaries could easily able to recognize the health institutions. Deputy CM also instructed them to convene meetings of committees constituted under rural and urban missions every Monday.On the occasion MP Balwinder Singh Bhundar, Chief secretary Sarvesh Kaushal, Principal Secretary to CM SK Sandhu, Principal Secretary to Deputy CM P.S. Aujla, Principal Secretary finance DP Reddy, Principal Secretary Labour and Housing Vishwajit Khanna, Principal Secretary Health and Family Welfare Vini Mahajan, Special Principal Secretary to CM Gaggandeep Singh Brar and Special Principal Secretary to Deputy CM Manvesh Singh Sidhu were also present in the meeting.