BHUBANESWAR: Even as Odisha battles with high incidence of diarrhoea among children, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) is all set to launch an extensive programme on ‘Management and prevention of childhood diarrhoea’ to combat the menace in the State. The programme would be launched in five districts of Rayagada, Kalahandi, Nabarangpur, Koraput and Kandhamal in association with Unicef and NRHM. These five districts, which are predominantly tribal, have been witnessing frequent outbreaks of cholera over the recent years.

BHUBANESWAR: The State Government has decided to sink 50,000 deep borewells by January, 2014 under the Biju Krushak Bikash Yojana to increase irrigation potential. A decision to this effect was taken at a high-level meeting presided over by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik at the Secretariat on Wednesday. Official sources said that so far 10,788 deep borewells have been installed under the programme and out of which 1,785 have been given electricity connection. A release from the Chief Minister’s office said that 8,000 more will be supplied power by June next year.

BHAWANIPATNA: The revamped public distribution system (PDS) has already been implemented in Kalahandi. Even as the new system aims at curbing pilferage in the PDS, questions are being raised over its effective implementation. Last year, the State Government had decided to do away with the storage-agent system from October 1 and replace it with a new arrangement following the Justice D P Wadhwa Committee report.

BHUBANESWAR: Odisha is making significant strides in curbing children’s mortality with the under-five mortality rate in the State declining at faster rate than the national average for the first time in 2010. Under-5 mortality has declined by six points from 84 in 2009 to 78 in 2010 surpassing the national average of five points from 64 in 2009 to 59 in 2012. The State, in fact, has recorded the second highest drop in Under-5 mortality after Madhya Pradesh during the year, the latest Sample Registration Survey (SRS) 2011 report has revealed.

BHUBANESWAR: Above a third of Odisha’s households have to trudge half a km and more every day to get their quota of drinking water. What is worse, their number has been on the rise, the latest House-listing and Housing Census 2011 has found. Indicating an abysmal state of affairs, the Census, which was released on Saturday, revealed that a whopping 35.4 per cent of households had to trek more than 500 metres from their houses to get drinking water during the decade ending 2011.

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has unearthed a land scam in Orissa where the state government acquired land for industrial houses like Vedanta and Posco by reportedly misusing existing provisions of the Land Acquisition Act. The CAG also found that the companies were not using the land for which they were allotted and instead, hoarding land whose market value ran into thousands of crores.

The Comptroller and Auditor-General of India has found that the Naveen Patnaik government has ‘misused' the Land Acquisition Act for acquiring land for several big industrial projects, including the proposed mega steel plant by South Korean steel major Posco.

“Emergency Provisions of Section 17 (4) were misused and applied arbitrarily even without indicating detailed justification for the same and without fulfilment of prescribed conditions,” the CAG has stated.