Provide loans to street vendors: Collector Sharath

Kamareddy: District Collector Dr A Sharath asked bank and agriculture department officials to formulate and implement an action plan to provide crop loans to farmers. He said the district is in the first place in the State in disbursing loans designed to finance Covid-19 epidemic and lauded the banks for providing Rs 30 crore loans to the poor and needy so far while the target for Covi-19 loans was Rs 57 crore.

He held a review meeting with agriculture and municipal department officials at Janahita Bhavan in the Collectorate here on Wednesday. The Collector asked the agriculture authorities to give crop loans from banks to eligible farmers and suggested that the crop loans should be extended to 75% of the farmers in all zones on weekdays.

Sharath stressed that banks should explain about one-time loan settlement scheme to the farmers, who have pending loans with them. The bank officials must give high priority to such persons. Farmers also need to be made aware of the insurance scheme and those aged above 18 years should be told that they will come under insurance cover. He said construction of mass toilets within the municipalities should be completed by September 15.

Municipal Commissioner Devender said applications were received from 5,526 street vendors in Kamareddy municipality. Of that, loans were disbursed to 1,167 street vendors so far. Mepma officials said 1,531 street vendors were identified for loans in Banswada municipal area and so far, 897 were given loans.

Collector Sharath directed the officials to give loans to all street vendors till September 7. He asked each resource person to give Covid loans to 50 street vendors. District Agriculture Officer Singareddy directed the farm officials to visit farmers' houses to enquire whether the need crop loan. He told them to strictly take farmer's signature in register if they do not need crop loan.

Additional Collector Venkatesh, Lead Bank Manager Rajender Reddy, District Transco SE Shesharao, Municipal Commissioners Devender (Kamareddy), Ramesh Kumar (Banswada), Khammar Haimad (Yellareddy), Mepma PD Sridhar Reddy and agriculture officers attended the meeting.