BHOPAL: Nearly 70 per cent of the street vendors in Bhopal have not been able to avail of the benefits of the Pradhan Mantri Swanidhi Yojana even after 8 months of the announcement of the scheme due to a lack of coordination between Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC) and the banks.
Under the scheme, announced in June 2020, street vendors will be able to avail of loans of Rs 10,000 in a year. The Centre had rolled out the scheme to extend help to those vendors who had lost their livelihood during the corona-induced lockdown.
There are only 22,000 such vendors for whom the loan has been sanctioned from banks. On the other hand, there are nearly 60,000 registered vendors in Bhopal.
Civic body officials, on the other hand, say the vendors have to register for loans, with one-time passwords (OTP) sent on their mobiles phones twice during their registration. However, most of the vendors do not own mobile phones.
BMC is the nodal agency for registration for loans from banks and this involves four steps. But the vendors allege gross negligence on the part of the civic body, saying all the steps involve their personal presence and the officials do not complete the process with priority.
The vendors say they cannot visit the BMC office every time they are asked to, keeping their shops closed. They say the officials of the banks turn them away citing incomplete details furnished by BMC.
