North MCD approves loans for 8,000 street vendors

The civic body has also established a special camp at Dussehra ground in Mukherjee Nagar to facilitate applicants for the loan process. North corporation mayor Jai Prakash on Wednesday also visited the SVANidhi Yojna camp to take stock of the enrolment process.

The North Delhi Municipal Corporation has approved applications of loans of ₹10,000 for over 8,000 street vendors under the Prime Minister Street Vendor’s Atmanirbhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi) Yojna.

HT Image

The civic body has proposed to provide small non-guarantee loans to nearly 15,000 street vendors to help them build their livelihood.

The civic body has also established a special camp at Dussehra ground in Mukherjee Nagar to facilitate applicants for the loan process. North corporation mayor Jai Prakash on Wednesday also visited the SVANidhi Yojna camp to take stock of the enrolment process.

According to civic officials, the north corporation has received 11,267 applications so far for the loan, of which 8,819 have been approved, while 631 are pending. The remaining 1,817 applications have been rejected on various grounds.

Prakash said the PM SVANidhi scheme intends to facilitate collateral-free working capital loans of up to ₹10,000 of one-year tenure, to help vendors resume their businesses in urban areas, including surrounding peri-urban and rural areas. He said the scheme intends to benefit nearly five million street vendors across the country but the local body aims to target 15,000 people by the end of the year

“We are proactively working for the scheme and would achieve our target of 15,000 by December 31, 2020. We are organising camps in each of the wards to facilitate street vendors specially in the weekly bazaar areas to assist the vendors in filling up letter of recommendation applications and loan applications. To spread awareness among street vendors about the scheme, special arrangements of public address systems, distribution of pamphlets and banners have also been made,” he said.

The mayor added that Aadhaar enrolment and updation centres have been set-up in every zone to link mobile numbers with Aadhaar as the generated one-time pin (OTP) is sent to the cellphone number linked to the Aadhaar card.