CITY TO CITY COOPERATION IS A MUST TO REDUCE EXPERIMENTATION ON TESTED POLICY &PROGRAMMES – O. RAJAGOPAL

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Union Minister of State for Urban Development & Poverty Alleviation, Sh. O.Rajagopal has said that city-to-city Cooperation through formal mechanism as well as informal approaches is vast and needs to be established to save onexperimentation and re-inventing the tested policy and programme measures. Hewas addressing the delegates at the National Seminar on City-to-City Cooperation on World Habitat Day, here today. He said that cities which are the centres of growth, generation of national wealth and innovations, should learn from each other experiences and avoid committing past mistakes. He cited the example of Urban Community Development Project initiated in 70s & 80s that later became Swama Jayanti Rozgar Yojna.

Sh. Rajagopal also explained various measures taken by his ministry in the context of financial and economic reform process and the move towards decentralization as per 74th Constitutional Amendment. "Apart from Central funds, guidelines have been issued for accessing capital market and channeling international aid’ , he said. He also said that in view of the need to

strengthen the capacity of local bodies and other implementing agencies, Ministry has earmarked considerable resources for capacity building by way of infrastructure, training, office automation and improved operational procedures.

Among others who need present on the occasion were Secretary ,Department of Urban Employment and Poverty Alleviation, Sh. D.K. Biswas, Chairman of HUDCO, Sh. Pankaj Jain, UN Resident Coordinator, Mrs. Brenda Mc Sweeney.