Ivan D'Souza elected as vice president of the Christian development committee

Pics: Spoorthi Ullal

Daijiworld Media Network - Mangaluru (JS)

Mangaluru, Sep 29: Chief whip of legislative council, Ivan D'Souza has been elected as the vice president of the Christian development committee of Karnataka minority development, Haj and Wakf department with effect from September 24.

Briefing about his plans and some of the challenges in the committee, Ivan on Thursday September 29 at his office in MCC, here said, "Currently, the minister for primary and secondary education, Tanveer Sait is the president of this committee. This committee started in 2011 with a grant of Rs 50 crore and currently the grant has gone upto Rs 125 crore annually. A lot of programmes like scholarship, skill development, subsidy on home loan interest and many other schemes have been implemented. But according to the observation, due to lack of awareness, not many have availed these benefits."

"In order to create awareness, a programme was conducted at Bidar, Gulbarga, Yadgiri, Raichur, Bellary, Mangaluru, Udupi and other districts. Along with awareness there was demand for new programmes to be taken up by the committee. Some of the major demands were to turn Christian development committee into Christian development corporation and to allot Rs 300 crore per annum, construction of hostels for rural Christian students who come to the city for education, opening of minority development offices in all taluk centres," he added.

"In 2015-16, about 6663 beneficiaries had been given Rs 16.35 crore. This year it has aimed for around 7684 beneficiaries to receive Rs 21.74 crore through various schemes. In order to bring all the minority offices under one roof, a building is under construction at Pandeshwar for which Rs 2 crore has been sanctioned and now we have requested the government to sanction another Rs 1.25 crore," Ivan explained.