Antyodaya Yojana a success in Himachal, says official

Deen Dayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Urban Livelihood Mission is proving very effective for socio-economic uplift of urban poor households in Himachal Pradesh, an official said on Sunday.

The scheme aims at improving the social, economic and institutional capacity of the urban poor households.

Under this scheme the families are imparted training along with providing financial assistance for gainful self-employment, so that they could live a respectful life, a government spokesperson told IANS.

Under the Deen Dayal Antyodaya Yojana, 2,293 self-help groups have been constituted out of which 1,780 self-help groups have been provided with revolving fund.

As many as 103 area level federations have also been constituted out of which 74 have been provided with revolving fund.

For setting up of small industries, 1,646 beneficiaries have been provided loan of Rs 22.15 crore at low interest rate and 424 self-help groups provided loans worth of Rs 6.13 crore.

As many as 4,282 beneficiaries have been provided training in various trades and 813 beneficiaries have been given employment under this scheme.

This scheme has also proved to be a boon for urban street vendors. Under this scheme, a survey has been conducted for urban street vendors in all 54 urban bodies of the state. Almost 5,000 vendors have been provided training in various trades and identity cards have been issued to 2,822 vendors.

Effective work is being done under this scheme for providing shelter to urban poor families. Six shelter homes have been constructed in various urban bodies and renovation of old shelter homes has also been done.

A total of 4,032 homeless people have been provided shelter in the state.

There are six main components under Deen Dayal Antoday Yojna-National Urban Mission: employment through skill training and placement, social mobilisation and institution development, capacity building and training, self employment programme, shelter for urban homeless and the main component is to provide assistance to urban street vendors.

The main objective of social awareness and institutional development component is to join family members of the beneficiaries with self-help groups and capacity building of the members through training programme.

After three months of successful working of self-help groups, a revolving fund of Rs 10,000 is given to them.

Under this programme, there is a provision to form area level federation by self-help groups, under which assistance of Rs 50,000 revolving fund is provided for internal transaction capacity.IANS