LUCKNOW: Yogi Adityanath government has provided a revolving fund of Rs 218.49 crore to around 36,000 families under the Rural Livelihood Mission (RLM) here on Thursday.
Through this fund, women engaged in sewing, embroidery, and production of disposable plates, spices, and face masks would be supported financially. The purpose of this fund is to promote self-employment and self-reliance among women self-help groups. They have been roped in by the state government to stitch 1 crore school dresses ahead of the new academic calendar.
As per the sources, to get the assignment completed, rural development department would coordinate with the basic education department to wheel in cloth to self-help groups (SHG), which would roll out school uniforms.
The sources in the rural development department also claimed that each woman who would be involved in stitching a dress, would earn around Rs 90. If she stitches two dresses per day, she can double her income. However, the rural development department would play facilitator, and the cost of each dress is pegged at Rs 300,” he said.
While the revolving fund was being directly transferred to the accounts of 35,938 families under the Rural Livelihood Mission on Thursday, the CM interacted with migrant workers and women of self-help groups from different districts through video conferencing.
In fact, most of the women beneficiaries associated with these self-help groups come from the families of migrant workers and labourers.
Appreciating the way various women voluntary organizations had contributed to the fight against corona by producing PPE kits and face masks, the CM said it proved how much talent existed in those groups.
“If given guidance and support, they are capable of doing anything,” said the CM. He added that if revolving funds and community investment funds would be made available to women self-groups consistently in time, they could emerge as a perfect example of rural self-reliance.
Earlier, the rural development department roped in women Self Help Groups to get over 11 lakh face masks and nearly 9,000 Personal Protection Kits stitched for health and police personnel who were fighting the pandemic on the frontline. Officials said, the department has already churned out 2,000 PPEs, which would be provided to Army hospitals. The department had tied up with khadi industries for the procurement of cloth for producing masks.
Moreover, the CM announced the appointment of 58,000 Banking Correspondents - Sakhis - to be deployed immediately. Through this move, rural women would connect with banks and make money transactions by visiting door-to-door. All these transactions will be digital. Since this move would minimize the bank visit by people so would the threat of Corona infection besides providing employment to village women.
Each ‘Sakhi’ would be paid Rs 4,000 per month for the next 6 months and Rs 50,000 would be given for the device for conducting transactions. In addition, the bank concerned would give them a commission on the transaction.
Meanwhile, the rural development department has kicked off the profiling of migrant women. According to sources, while skilled women were being directly incorporated into SHGs, unskilled ones were are being imparted training in horticulture and food processing sector.
As per the data available at the rural development department, around 5.4 lakh migrants women had reached UP till Wednesday. Of this, 2.49 lakh were profiled of which 1.09 lakh were skilled women and 1.39 unskilled.