AP to launch family card for tracking welfare schemes

Amaravati: In a move aimed at enhancing the effectiveness and transparency of welfare schemes, Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu on Thursday directed officials to create a family card for every household. This card will be on par with the Aadhaar card and will be used to track the implementation of government benefits at the ground level. During a review of the family benefit monitoring system at the Secretariat, the Chief Minister emphasised that achieving public satisfaction would be a key goal of his administration.

He instructed officials to assign a ‘family score’ to each household to ensure that welfare schemes are being implemented with full transparency. All benefits received from various schemes will be updated on this new family card, which will be distributed to all family members to support the economic improvement of the poor.

The Chief Minister also called for a focus on social re-engineering, highlighting the need to identify and support individuals from specific castes within the BC, OC, and SC categories, who are economically backward. He stressed that technology must be tapped to effectively uplift the poor with help of the welfare schemes.

Expressing concern over the decline of the traditional joint family system, the Chief Minister noted that some families are dividing to become eligible for government welfare schemes. He announced that the state government plans to introduce a new population policy and redesign welfare schemes to protect the interests of joint families and preserve the state's cultural traditions.

Chief Secretary K Vijayanand and other senior officials were present at the meeting.