UN agencies, Odisha govt discuss on achieving Sustainable Development Goals

February 17, 2018 Government

Bhubaneswar: Delegates from various UN agencies on Saturday met Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik at state Secretariat here to discuss various models of partnership for achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Patrick Van Weerelt, Head, UN Staff College, Bonn, Simona Sow, UN Staff College, Bonn, Nistha Satyam, Deputy Head UN Women, Dr Deepa Prasad, and Head of UNFPA Odisha met the Chief Minister.

Highlighting Odisha’s achievements on various social indicators in women development and empowerment, the Chief Minister said the State Government has created an institutional framework for achieving SDGs.

The State Government has also mapped the schemes aligning with SDGs and prepared State Specific indicators to monitor the progress.

The Chief Minister proposed to strengthen institutionalization of the monitoring framework for the SDGs in collaboration with UN agencies.

The Chief Minister said Odisha has emerged as a leader in bringing 8 million people above the poverty line with a reduction of 24 percentage point in poverty levels in a decade.

Odisha is also a leading State in the country in providing housing to the poor, he said.

He also spoke about the success of the State Government in significantly reducing IMR and MMR and bringing it down to a better level than the national average.

The conditional cash transfer mechanism under MAMATA scheme for pregnant women has benefited more than 3.1 million women, he said.

He also highlighted the empowerment of 5 million women through five lakh SHGs.

He said better collaboration with UN Women can bring further empowerment of women in the State.

Appreciating the efforts and achievements of the State Government, the delegates of UN agencies said that the UN is ready to cooperate with the State Government on SDGs where Odisha can be a model and thought the leader in the process to achieve SDGs.

APC, Principal Secretaries and Secretaries of concerned departments were present in the meeting.