Naidu relaunches Anna Canteens

Gudivada: Relaunching Anna Canteen at Gudivada in Krishna district on Thursday, Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu pitched for the top 10% of the rich category of society to come forward and join his efforts to achieve zero poverty in the state.

Inaugurating the renovated Anna Canteens scheme where breakfast, lunch and dinner would be served for Rs 5 to the poor, Naidu said the biggest satisfaction for anyone should be to see the needy have three proper meals at affordable prices. Naidu along with his wife Nara Bhuvaneswari not only shared lunch with them but also interacted with them to understand their struggle in life, their income levels and asked them what kind of government help could change their future. He said based on the feedback of such people, the government would come up with an action plan for PPPP model to implement its vision of zero poverty.

Later addressing the gathering, Naidu asked an auto driver to narrate his life story. The driver said he has two children, a son and a daughter and that during the previous term of the TDP, he had taken loan from the BC Corporation and purchased an auto. With his earnings of about Rs 400 per day he had struggled to give education to his son and run the family.

Naidu asked him to call his son and asked him whether he was shouldering the responsibility of his father. He said he was working in the IT sector in Hyderabad, and he had taken up the responsibility of educating his sister. He said she was now about to become a BDS doctor.

The CM asked the District Collector to find out if petrol run autos can be converted into EVs so that not many others can be helped to convert petrol or diesel autos into EVs.

He also directed the Collector to buy an EV scooter and give it to a woman who makes her living by selling sarees by going door to door. He also directed the Collector to help another woman who was a push-cart vendor to modernise her cart. He further assured a roadside shoemaker to provide a proper shop to carry on his profession.

When these people were appreciating the re-opening of Anna Canteens, Naidu said this was just a beginning. In all, 203 such canteens would be opened across the state. He said he got this inspiration from the founder of TDP N T Rama Rao and the yeomen service of Dokka Seethamma had rendered to society by feeding the hungry throughout her life.

He felicitated a businessman Raju who donated Rs 1 crore for the Anna Canteen Trust and Nara Bhuvaneswari who donated Rs 1 crore on behalf of the NTR Trust to run the canteens. Raju said that for the next five years, he would donate Rs 1 crore per year for this scheme. Naidu appealed to the people to reduce their expenses on celebrations like birthday and marriages and donate to the Trust so that many more hungry stomachs could be supplied food.