Hyderabad: The state government is now planning to merge the Mission for Elimination of Poverty in Municipal Areas (MEPMA) with the Society for the Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP), bringing it under one umbrella.
Both organizations, MEPMA and SERP, are focused on poverty alleviation, but they operate in different geographical areas and with different mandates. While the MEPMA focuses on urban poverty, the SERP (Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty) concentrates on rural poverty.
According to officials, the objective is to empower urban poor, especially women in slums, and promote self-sustainable institutions like Self-Help Groups (SHGs) for access to credit, health, and other services. The activities of both the organisations involve providing livelihood training for urban youth, manage urban SHGs, and implement poverty reduction programs in cities and municipalities.
Explaining the mechanism, the official said that MEPMA is integrating its data and programs with SERP, for example, by migrating SHG data from MEPMA to the SERP platform. By this integration, the gap between urban and rural poor can be bridged by creating a single, unified system, allowing better management of resources and a more comprehensive approach to poverty eradication. The officials said that this decision was in line with the ideas of Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy. Several key proposals were already prepared. The state government will soon issue official orders on this merger process. While these two organizations provide similar services, one is under the supervision of the Municipal Department, the other comes under the purview of the Panchayat Raj Department. There are a total of one crore women who are members of these two organizations.
The official said that the government has recognized that some administrative problems were arising with these two organizations. There is one policy in villages and another in towns in terms of finance, training, supervision, etc. for self-help groups.
The government has directed the officials to formulate a new policy, giving uniformity to both of these. On the other hand, the grant given by the state government to these associations is also being distributed separately. This is creating confusion in allocations.
The government has noticed many issues like different offices and salary differences for employees. It has been estimated that the operating cost will be double due to the existence of two organizations.
The government has come to the conclusion that there was no need to have two organizations when the plan for loans was the same. The government believes by merging these two wings under one department with one digital platform would make services easier.
