Rajahmundry, June 11^th: The financial incentive offered under the Girl Child Protection Scheme is serving as a potential family planning mechanism. The young couples especially from rural areas are restricting their family size to either one or two daughters in the West Godavari District. Girl Child Protection scheme was introduced by the government in 2005 to discourage couple waiting for getting a son, despite having several daughters.

Under this scheme, if the couple below the poverty line restricts their family size to only one daughter, the girl will gat a financial incentive worth Rs 1 lakh when she attains the age of 21 and remains unmarried. Similarly if the couple limits their family size to two daughters, each girl will get Rs 30,000 when they attain the age of 21 and remained unmarried. In addition to this the government provides annual scholarship worth Rs 1,200 to each girl to purse classes VIII, IX, X and intermediate.

The women and welfare department which is the implementing agency of the scheme is enrolling 5,000 beneficiaries on an average per annum in the district. They have been taking up awareness campaigns among young couples especially in rural areas on the importance of limiting family size to either one or two. In addition to this adolescent girls are being trained in various vocational courses like computers, embroidery, fabric painting and other under Kishora Shakti Yojana.