‘Svanidhi scheme helps street vendors in Hyderabad’
HYDERABAD: Claiming that Hyderabad had the most number of street vendors who received loans under PM Svanidhi Yojana at zero interest, Union Minister for Tourism and Culture G Kishan Reddy said on Sunday that it helped them avoid falling into the trap of private money lenders.
He was speaking at a special event held for women who completed three-month skill development training in courses like tailoring, maggam works, and beautician course offered by Atal Bihari Vajpayee Foundation (ABVF). The event was held at Keshav Memorial School in Narayanguda. He also talked about various measures that the Centre had taken for the empowerment of women.
Recalling the time he lived in BJP office in 1980, he said that it had taken inmates five years and MPs intervention to get a cooking gas connection. He added that cooking a meal on firewood stove was same as smoking 400 cigarettes. “Today, every household has a gas connections. The Centre will soon reduce the price of a gas cylinder by `200,” he said.
He said that it was BJP’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who started welfare schemes for women’s self-help groups duriong his time as the Prime Minister. He said that the Centre was paying its share of 50 per cent to bear the cost of loans for women SHGs, however, the State government had not been paying its share for the past eight years.
He further said that the Centre had been encouraging women to join the armed forces. The Centre was ready to implement 33 per cent reservations for women in these forces, he said.