Gangtok, Jan 16: Sikkim Chief Minister Prem Singh Tamang announced various incentives for people belonging to the indigenous communities to produce more children.
Addressing a Maghe Sankranti function in Jorethang town of South Sikkim on Sunday, he stated that the population of indigenous communities has dwindled with Sikkim’s “fertility rate registering the lowest growth rate at one child per woman in recent years.”
“We want to arrest the declining fertility rate by incentivizing local people, including women, to produce more children,” Tamang said.
The chief minister stated his government has already provided 365 days of maternity leave to women in service and 30 days of paternity leave to male employees to encourage them to raise babies.
Also, the state government has proposed to give one increment to the women employees for giving birth to a second baby and two increments for producing a third child, he said.
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This financial benefit will not be made available to a woman having only one child, Tamang clarified.
The chief minister stated that the overall people will also be eligible for financial assistance for producing multiple children the info of in an effort to be worked out by the Health and Women Child Care departments.
Tamang also stated that his government has launched the IVF facility in hospitals in Sikkim to inspire women to conceive babies in the event of having problems to do so naturally for which a grant of Rs 3 lakh will be given to all mothers producing children through this procedure.
He said that so far 38 women have conceived through IVF facilities and some of them have become mothers too.
Tamang hit out at the previous Pawan Kumar Changing government for “coercing” the Sikkimese people to raise small families with one child only and said his Sikkim Krantikari Morcha (SKM) government wanted to do exactly the opposite by urging and incentivizing local people to raise bigger families with three children in order to arrest the declining population.
The estimated population of Sikkim stood at under 7 lakh at present of which around 80 percent belonged to the indigenous communities.
