District collector sets top five priorities to focus on

Visakhapatnam : Stressing on improving public health infrastructure and setting it as his top priority, M N Harendhira Prasad, who recently took charge as collector of Visakhapatnam district, says that it stands as his top priority to focus on as people tend to spend exorbitantly to meet mounting medical expenses.

In an interview with The Hans India, the collector shares that significance would be given to preventive and tertiary care as well.

“We should address health issues at the grassroots level by giving preference to preventive care. At tertiary care level, measures should be considered to facilitate it free of cost, for the urban poor in particular. For this to become a reality, public health infrastructure along with service delivery systems should be enhanced,” the collector emphasises.

As education is an effective tool to uplift the poor out of poverty, Harendhira Prasad stresses that it would be his second area of focus. “If one has to grow from one level to the next and uplift youth belonging to weaker sections, education is the solution so that they not only settle in decent jobs but also lead a better quality of life,” he reasons.

Sharing his other priorities, the collector says that skill development plus job creation, improved public infrastructure and protecting land from getting grabbed form a part of his top five priorities.

Apparently, the collector says, the industry needs graduates who are job-ready. “For the youth to become employees, they have to go through the right sort of training. There is a need to identify the skill gap among youth and spot jobs available in the industry to connect one another. Fortunately, we have a huge industrial base, including pharma, BPO services or manufacturing companies. However, there is a need to carry out the matching exercise on a large scale,” explains the collector.

As a part of enhancing the public infrastructure, Harendhira Prasad says that he is keen on making the city much more liveable, cleaner and greener by facilitating a favourable infrastructure such as parks, public spaces, and common zones for the people.

Another area of focus would be resolving issues pertaining to land, including encroachments and land grabbing, the collector adds.

Even as the Andhra Pradesh government is serious about job creation bringing in investments in IT space, financial service sector along with other domains, Harendhira Prasad underlines the need for coordination among concerned departments so that things fall in place for investments and the set goals could be achieved in a hassle-free manner. Along with the assistance of public funding, a host of projects have been rolled out with the support of a bunch of companies through their corporate social responsibility initiatives, the Collector informs, adding that such support would be sought for projects in future too as many come forward to extend help through their CSR arm. “I need to tap their potential as well,” he says.

Briefing about plans he has in place to enhance industry safety mechanisms, Harendhira Prasad says, “The stress is on sharing best practices. Involving stakeholders, we are planning to conduct crisis group meetings at regular intervals. As many as18 large scale industries have been identified for dealing with stringent chemicals that may pose potential hazards. The sole solution for this is to follow a safety mechanism which is no longer an option but should be made part of the design itself.”

By holding regular meetings with industry stakeholders, carrying out safety audits, getting on-site and off-site emergency plans readied, building awareness among communities and sharing best practices among the companies, the Collector expresses confidence that the district is certain to set an example for industrial safety.