Bhubaneswar: While distributing revolving funds to self-help groups (SHGs) at Rabindra Mandap Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik today reiterated the commitment of the State Government for empowerment of women and added that more development schemes are likely to be introduced for the socio-economic growth of the people.
While the Chief Minister himself distributed the revolving funds to 19 SHGs, in total 704 SHGs received their revolving funds from BMC.
Revolving funds are given to SHGs for their livelihood support. The women members of the SHG can start a small business with adding their own contribution amount. The advantage side is that if they want to expand, they can avail loan with only 7 percent interest. If they are paying interest in due time, 3 percent of interest shall be waived. It means interest amount will come down to only 4 percent.
It can be mentioned here that all cities with a population of 100,000 or more as per the 2011 Census and district headquarters have been covered under the NULM programme. All urban BPL as identified by state/ UT would be the target group under the programme. The coverage may be broadened to include families of disadvantaged Groups like SC, STs, and women headed households, disabled etc. Within 25% of the urban BPL population of the state/ UT
The Livelihood Mission addresses the following three issues:
• Occupational Vulnerability
• Residential Vulnerability
• Social Vulnerability
Through NULM bank linkage and linking members with govt schemes are always on the priority. Till date, BMC had sanctioned Revolving funds to 11 numbers of SHGs during in the year 2016-17. After today’s event revolving fund has been sanctioned to 715 SHGs.
Under NULM under the BMC area five city livelihood centres (CLCs) have been established at Bharatpur, Brahmeswarpatna, Niladri Vihar, Pokhariput and Dumduma. They will be functional very soon. The main objective of CLC is to work as a bridge between the urban poor and their livelihood. One more objective of establishing CLCs at city level is to address the gaps and create a platform where the urban poor can offer their goods and services in an organized manner to the potential buyers i.e. the CLC would strive to bridge the gap between demand and supply of the goods and services produced by the urban poor.
Employment through Skill Training and Placement (EST&P) programme under NULM intends to fill the gap between the demand and availability of local skills by providing skill training programs as required by the market, provide skills to the unskilled urban poor as well as upgrade their existing skills. The program provides skill training of the urban poor to enable them to set up self-employment ventures and for salaried jobs in the private sector. During 2015-16 and 2016-17, the training under EST&P was imparted in various wards of BMC to 3,327 uban poor in Garment Training, Information Communication Technologies, Light Motor Vehicle, Banking and Accounting, Beauty and Hair Dressing and automobile repair etc.
Bhubaneswar has seven numbers of Shelters for Urban Homeless at Ashok Nagar, Baramunda, Bhimpur, Chandraskharpur, Ganga Nagar, Ghatikia and Malisahi. Ghatikia is having a capacity of providing shelter to 468 homeless persons every day.
In order to extend Support to Urban Street Vendors the development of infrastructure for street vendors constitutes a key activity in the Shelter and Social Infrastructure component of the Livelihood Mission. Street vendors constitute an important segment at the bottom of the pyramid of the informal economy in cities. On account of being unorganized and self-employed, street vendors lack linkage with social security measures.
As part of Support to Urban Street Vendors component of NULM BMC has identified about 21,000 vendors. A detailed implementation plan for vending zones is being prepared for such vendors. BMC has conducted a survey of street vendors in the city and 21,000 number of street vendors have been identified so far.
Capacity building and training programme is aimed at imparting in depth knowledge of NULM and urged all the trainees to draw maximum benefit for effective implementation of the scheme. Till date capacity building and training programme has been provided to 241 SHGs.
Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) Mayor Ananta Narayan Jena said “we are grateful to the Chief Minister for his support and dedication towards development of the State. The revolving fund will definitely help towards more empowerment and socio-economic upliftment of the women groups.’’
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