Be careful in selection of families under Public-Private People Partnership (P4) programme since it would defeat the ideals of the government, District Collector of Vizianagaram B.R Ambedkar directed officials. He said that the families under below poverty line should be selected to ensure their adoption by mentors who came forward to be part of the P4 programme.

His words assumed significance as the officials selected nearly 62,500 families but the number had come down to 37,500 after filtration. It was observed that many government officials and staff worked casually and selected the families randomly instead of doing proper assessment about their socio-economic condition. The District Collector intervened and made many changes in the list by collecting the data from other sources.

“Right now, we have identified 37,500 golden families and our target is 50,000 families by August 15. We are hopeful that the target can be reached. Fortunately, the response from mentors is also good. The entire process of selection of mentors is being done in a transparent way. We asked officials not to force anyone to be mentor since it is to be done voluntarily after understanding the concept of P4 designed to eradicate poverty completely in the State,” said Mr. Ambedkar.