Ranchi, June 24: Nagrik Sahayata Kendra (NSK) or citizen help desks under the Jharkhand government’s Zero Hunger Panchayat project have come to the rescue of the vulnerable people of the state.
The NSKs help such people access their rights by bridging service accessibility gaps and ensuring accountability of service delivery systems.
The citizen help desks were formed in November 2021 but became operational in 80 blocks of Jharkhand in early 2022 as part of the Zero Hunger Panchayat initiative which saw the rural development department inking an understanding with a consortium of civil society organisations (CSOs) namely Welthungerhilfe (WHH), BMZ, PHIA Foundation, PRADAN and Sampurna Gram Vikas Kendra (SGVK).
A one-day state level workshop on Nagrik Sahayata Kendra (Citizen’s Help Desk) in Jharkhand, a joint initiative of Jharkhand government CSO was organised in Ranchi earlier this week.
The main objective of the workshop was to share the learnings of the NSK for the past one and half years and provide a platform for initiating a dialogue for inter- inter agency coordination and collaboration to scale up the NSK – grievance redressal mechanism across other blocks of Jharkhand.
Later a panel discussion was moderated by Johnson Topno from PHIA Foundation on the topic “Panel discussion – Building Ecosystem to expand the idea “NSK” as crucial mechanism for enhancing citizen’s access to public services.
The second panel discussion on the topic “Inter-agency coordination and collaboration for scaling up of the NSKs in the state – opportunities and challenges” was moderated by Balram from Right To Food.
The key way forwards from the workshop were involvement of other CSO in the state advisory committee formed under the NSK initiative for better coordination and redressal of cases from different districts.
It was also felt that NSK needs to be part of the district Coordination committee of the government for highlighting the cases from the blocks and NSKs should be opened across all blocks of the state in a phase wise manner.
It was also suggested that there is high scope for alignment with the existing National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) program hence this should be explored with the state level team.
